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ลำดับตอนที่ #103 : Why is Shakespeare more popular than ever?
Why is Shakespeare
more popular than ever?
The Internet has
played its part in the brand Bard propagation (Spark Notes, hem, hem), but it has also produced a
mountain of alternative, more contemporary content upon which we could choose to feast. And yet it is
Shakespeare who has risen to the top. And not just online where he's looked up
so much that there are now bespoke Shakespeare search engines.
You'll find him
sitting on shelves in African bookshops, on laptops in Lapland, and on stage in
jungle theatres. You'll hear his words pop up in pop songs, being quoted in
movies, and spoken on the street.
Say: "To be or
not to be" in just about any country and the locals will know that you're
quoting Shakespeare. Crime novelists, business folk, football managers and
lawyers all plunder
his lexicon for
that catchy title or perfectly apt phrase.
How did it happen?
How has Shakespeare survived and thrived and transformed into an international superstar, when
his contemporaries have not? Okay, fellow playwrights from the Elizabethan
Golden Age of theatre are still knocking about - Marlowe, Jonson, Fletcher et
al - but not in anything like the same omnipresent way.
What has
Shakespeare's work got that theirs hasn't? In fact, what is it about his
writing that outlasts and outwits
just about every other wordsmith
that's ever lived?
There is no writer
on the planet who has as much work in daily play as that produced by the Sweet
Swan of Avon (as Ben Jonson called him). Not even JK Rowling or Bob Dylan can
better the Bard. The man and his words permeate the lives of billions of people.
Simon Russell Beale,
the acclaimed
Shakespearian actor, thinks it is the inherent adaptability of the plays that has made
them such hearty and hardy travellers over time and space. "There are no
rules with Shakespeare," he says. And then quotes the old joke in which
the great director says to the young actor: "There are a thousand ways to
play Hamlet [beat] and that's not one of them."
The point being, there
are a thousand ways to play Hamlet. There are not a thousand ways to play Willy
Loman, the delusional
protagonist in Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman. Nor,
typically, with a Samuel Beckett part, where the playwright's handed-down
directional wishes tend to be very specific. And, there's not a lot of wriggle room for an
actress playing Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, or an actor taking on Chekhov's
Konstantin in The Seagull.
It seems only
Shakespeare was able to create highly believable three-dimensional characters
that can morph in myriad ways. His
characters are, Russell Beale says, "very hospitable" to actors.
The same applies to
his plays, which Andrew Dickson, author of the recently published Worlds
Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe, says have an
"openness" that allows them to be endlessly reinterpreted.
They were
"designed to be reinvented", says Dickson. Partly because they had so
many different audiences to please when originally written - one afternoon
Shakespeare would find his work being performed for the royal court, the
following day the same piece would be played before the groundlings of Blackfriars.
But more
importantly, they often started life elsewhere. Shakespeare's plays weren't
always entirely his in the first place.
Professor Gordon
McMullan, Director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King's College, London,
says Shakespeare "was first and foremost an adapter" (Dickson describes the Bard as "a
shameless hack"). He cites Romeo And Juliet as a centuries-old story
Shakespeare took and rewrote. "I'm not saying he was a plagiarist, but he did
rely heavily on pre-existing works."
Improvisation was Shakespeare's thing - lines and parts could be added or
removed on a whim,
variety was the spice of his writing life with multiple versions of the same
play frequently on offer (there are at least three different Hamlet
manuscripts).
He was not bound up
in dogma. If he was
struggling to find a suitable word or phrase to describe some action he would
simply invent one (try doing that in your school Shakespeare essay). And if he
wasn't sure how to end a scene or an act he wouldn't fret about it all night, but instead write
a variety of alternatives and hand the problem over to his actors to solve.
It was he who set
the precedent that
his dramatic works were ripe
for customisation.
Go ahead, was his implicit
invitation to all future writers, actors, and directors, pimp my plays - cut,
paste, adapt, and reinterpret.
And so they have
been, time and time again. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein turned Romeo
And Juliet into the musical West Side Story. The Bollywood director Vishal
Bhardwaj transformed Macbeth into a gangster movie called Maqbool (2003).
And these are but
two examples of thousands of re-imaginings of Shakespeare's plays that have
occurred across the world. Which begs the question - why has he travelled so
far, so successfully?
The familiar
argument is that his poetic words travelled first-class on the imperial winds of Empire.
As England and then Britain extended her reach across the globe, Shakespeare's
plays became an important tool of indoctrination, and in Dickson's view, subjugation: "Shakespeare was imposed on Indian
children to instil
British culture and values." The colonial concept was "teach Shakespeare and
they become like you".
According to
Dickson: "You had to be able to quote Shakespeare at length to land a job in the Indian Civil
Service - a test that was maintained right up until the 1920s."
But people and
Shakespeare can't be tamed
so easily. Dickson says the Indians quickly saw the merits in this English
literary export. They liked his stories, and so rewrote them in their native
language with the overbearing
British often cast
in highly unfavourable light.
Such revisions are
made easy by the nature of the plays. Many of Shakespeare's stories are set in
abstract places with plots that apply to many cultures - Hamlet is about
revenge and a young man who doesn't get on with his step-father, Othello is ostensibly about jealousy
and Twelfth Night is a good old farce based on mistaken identity. And it is this universal
aspect of his work that ultimately makes it so timeless and timely.
The Rwandans see
Hamlet as a story of revenge, while some contemporary Manhattan audiences draw
a parallel with King Lear's sad decline with their own perceptions of America's diminishing powers. The
Chinese are particularly keen on The Merchant Of Venice for reasons Dickson
says date back to its war with Japan and a feeling of inferiority. The Germans - who have long
considered Shakespeare to be theirs - found profound meaning in A Midsummer Night's Dream
during the Cold War because of the first scene in Act V, in which a wall
divides:
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!
Thou, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!
Ultimately, though,
it has to come down to the writing. I know when Shakespeare travels the texts
get changed and much can be lost in translation, but the works are imbued with his
brilliance.
Even if the words
are not the same, the sense of meaning and rhythm remain. He was an
extraordinarily gifted observer of the human condition who also happened to
have the literary skills to put what he saw into words that resonated in
Elizabethan England at first, and now across the globe.
Of course he wasn't
faultless. His modern resurgence
started with Coleridge
and the Romantics who - like the Germans - were fond of the idea of the solitary genius. We
shouldn't fall into the same rose-tinted trap. As Simon Russell Beale says, as a playwright
"he could be terrible", but then, as the actor is quick to add,
"at his best he is the very best".
Propagate
(v.)
to
produce a new plant from a parent plant
(of a plant or animal)
to produce young plantsor animals
to spread opinions, lies,
or beliefs among a lot of people:
Propagation
(n.)
contemporary (adj.)
feast (n.)
a special meal with very good food or a large meal for many people:
something that is very enjoyable to see,
hear,
experience, etc.
a
collection of something to be enjoyed:
plunder (v.)
to
steal goods violently from a place,
especially during a war
to steal or remove something precious from something, in a way that does not consider moral laws or is more severethan
it need be:
lexicon (n.)
(a list of) all the words used in a particular language or subject, or a dictionary
a
dictionary
apt (adj.)
suitable or right for a particular situation:
thrived (v.)
to grow, develop, or be successful:
omnipresent (Adj.)
present or having an effect everywhere at the same time:
outwits (v.)
to get an advantage over someone by acting more cleverlyand often by using a trick:
wordsmith (n.)
a person who has skill with using words, especially in writing:
permeate (v.)
to spread through something and be present in every part of it:
acclaimed(n.)
inherent (Adj.)
existing as a natural or basic part of something:
delusional (Adj.)
believing things that are not true:
protagonist (n.)
an important supporter of an idea or political system:
wriggle (v.)
to
twist your body, or move part of your body,
with small, quick movements
to move somewhere using short,
quick twistingmovements:
morph (v.)
to gradually change one image into another, or combinethem, using a computer program:
myriad (n.)
a very large number of something:
hospitable
(adj.)
friendly and welcoming to guests and visitors:
groundlings (n.)
a knowledge of the basic facts about a particular subject:
foremost (adj,)
most important or best; leading:
plagiarist
(v.)
to use another person's ideas or work and pretend that it is your own:
Improvisation
(n.)
a
performance that an actor,
musician, etc. has not practisedor planned:
the act of making or doing something with whatever is
available at the time:
Whim (n.)
a sudden wish or idea, especially one that cannot be reasonably explained:
dogma (n.)
a fixed, especially religious, belief or set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without any doubts
fret (v.)
precedent (n.)
an action,
situation, or decision that has
already happened and can be used
as a reason why a similar actionor
decision should be performed or made:
the way that something has been done in the past that therefore shows that it is the correct way:
a decision about a particular legal casethat makes it likely that other similar cases will be decided in the same way:
ripe (adj.)
(of fruit or crops) completely developed and ready to be collected or eaten:
A ripe smell is strong and unpleasant:
used to describe language that is rude:
Implicit(Adj.)
suggested but not communicated directly:
complete and without any doubts:
pimp (n.)
a man who controls prostitutes, especially by findingcustomers for them, and takes some of the money that they earn
(v.)
to
act as a pimp, getting customers for prostitutes;
to provide someone to a customer as a prostitute
to
make something look fashionable or impressive, usually by adding things to it:
imperial(adj.)
belonging or relating to an empire or the person or countrythat rules it:
Indoctrination (v.)
to often repeat an idea or belief to someone in order to persuade them to accept it:
subjugation
(v.)
to
defeat people or a country and rule them in a way that allows them no freedom
to
treat yourself, your wishes,
or your beliefs as being less important than other people or their wishes or beliefs:
imposed(v.)
to officially force a rule,
tax,
punishment, etc. to be obeyed or received:
to force someone to accept something, especially a beliefor
way of living:
to expect someone to do
something for you or spend timewith you when they do
not want to or when it is not convenient for them:
instil (v.)
to put a feeling, idea, or principle gradually into someone's mind, so that it has a strong influence on the way that personthinks or behaves:
colonial (n.)
a person from another country who lives in a colony,
especially as part of its system of government
at length
After a long
time; eventually; at last.
= In great detail;
fully.
tamed (adj.)
(especially of animals) not wild or dangerous, either naturallyor
because of training or long involvement with humans:
overbearing (adj.)
too confident and too determined to tell other people what to do, in a way
that is unpleasant:
ostensibly
(adj.)
appearing or claiming to be one thing when it is really something else:
farce (n.)
a humorous play or film where the characters becomeinvolved in unlikely situations
the
style of writing or acting in this type of play:
decline (v.)
to gradually become less, worse, or lower:
to refuse:
diminishing (v.)
to reduce or be reduced in size or importance:
inferiority
(adj.)
not good, or not as good as someone or something else:
profound (adj.)
felt or experienced very strongly or in an extreme way:
showing a clear and deep understanding of serious matters:
imbue something/someonewith something
to fill something or someone with a quality or feeling:
resurgence (n.)
a new increase of activity or interest in a particular subject or idea that had been forgotten for some time:
solitary adj.)
A
solitary person or thing is the only person or thing in a place
done
alone:
tinted (adj.)
(of glass) with colour added:
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