It’s difficult to define genius. Some people will sometimes call a high-scoring football player a genius, others will regard someone who’s good at his/her job as a genius, so the word is often loosely used. It can’t be defined, but we probably all agree that the likes of Darwin, Newton, Shakespeare and Michelangelo were geniuses.

Most of those towering figures are known for just one thing – evolution, physics, writing, art and so on. Imagine, Einstein, the greatest academic of his era, running a university. Perhaps he would have been brilliant at it but perhaps, also, he wasn’t interested. But one genius, Shakespeare had quite a diverse career, albeit focused on the theatre.

Shakespeare’s career was short by today’s standards, lasting fewer than thirty years, but he managed during that time to make himself a very rich man.

He started as an actor, although there is some evidence that his first job in a theatre was looking after the horses of the theatre-goers – a sort of car park attendant. London at that time had more than twenty theatres and theatre-going was by far the main leisure activity. The demand for scripts was enormous – there had to be new plays every day – so there was a great opportunity for writers. Shakespeare grasped that opportunity and very soon became one of the most popular playwrights in London.

A group of actors, which included Shakespeare, opened the Globe Theatre in 1599. They made serious money, using Shakespeare’s scripts and commissioning those of others who also became giants of the Elizabethan theatre, like Webster, Tournier, Middletone, Rowley and many others. We know that Shakespeare worked with those writers on their plays, sometimes writing or rewriting bits of them. The Globe became the most famous and highly-regarded of the London theatres, They were so successful that they opened another theatre at Blackfriers and continued to rake it in.

So Shakespeare was at the top level of acting, writing and theatre management. He also directed plays and managed the talent of others. And during all that time he was writing. It’s hard to imagine how he found the time to write so many plays when he was a full-time actor, director and business manager. It’s because he was a genius, generally, with a huge intelligence, a very high level of skill and impeccable judgment, in several areas.

It’s even harder to imagine when we know that he spent half his time in London and half in Stratford, commuting between them, using a transport system that most of us would use once and never again.

So once again, well done, Bill!

medieval shakespeare scene

What would Shakespeare have thought about the things that we take for granted and which he never dreamt of? We all jump in a car at least once a day; we get on a plane and travel at incredible speed from once country to another; we push a button and watch wars being fought thousands of miles away; we watch a play without moving from our armchairs. I could go on forever, outlining all the things we do without giving them a second thought.

Shakespeare regularly commuted between Stratford and London, and each time it would have been a very bumpy journey taking the whole day and possibly longer. We can travel from London to Stratford in about an hour, very comfortably, listening to any music we choose. To listen to music Shakespeare would have had to take the trouble to go the place where the musicians were.

Could he have possibly imagined that we would send people to walk on the moon? That we have landed vehicles on Mars and Titan, sat back and watched moving pictures of their activity there? Even the idea of pictures that hadn’t been painted by an artist would have been beyond his imagination.

The technology of his time was strictly mechanical, based on the wheel and operated by manpower. And he had no reason to think it would go beyond that, just as we, with all our electronic miracles, can’t imagine what our descendents four hundred years into the future will be taking for granted.

Writers today work on computers with the internet running in the background. Whenever they need a piece of information they just make a couple of clicks and they get it. We are overwhelmed by Shakespeare’s knowledge but the truth is that ten-year-old kids have more knowledge than he had. It may be different knowledge but kids have far more knowledge as such.

Shakespeare was well-read but not as well read as the average educated adult is today. He had a few books on his shelf – two history books, a book about classical mythology, a bible, some medieval philosophy – and look what he made of that. All his history plays were based on the stories taken from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicle of English History and the stories he presents in his Roman plays from North’s translation of the Roman historian, Plutarch. Look what he made of those two sources!

Try and imagine yourself without the internet. Try and imagine what your great great great great great grandchildren will take for granted. You can’t. As Hamlet says: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Shakespeare didn’t know what they were but he knew that they are there even though we couldn’t begin to imagine them.

Sunday 25^th October was St Crispin’s Day. Henry V is structured around that day because  October 25^th was the day on which Henry defeated the French at Agincourt. It’s also the day on which two other celebrated battles were fought: the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War, immortalised by Tennyson in his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific, 1944.

St Crispin’s Day is burned into our culture because of Henry’s speech, encouraging his troops in the face of overwhelming odds, and here’s a piece of it:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

St Crispin’s Day is actually the feast day of  both St Crispin and St Crispinian, Roman twins, the patron saints of cobblers – for that’s what they were, teaching the gospels to the Gauls by day and making  and mending shoes by night. In modern times they are also the patron saints of cyclists, of all things!

Thebrothers fell foul of the authorities because of their Christian preaching and were tortured and beheaded in 256. Strangely, although the majority of recognised saints are legendary rather than historical figures, St Crispin’s Day was removed from the Catholic list of feast days because the Vatican decided that there was little evidence of their existence.

But because of one of the most famous passages in Shakespeare’s works we remember St Crispian and St Crispinian (Crispian in Shakespeare)’

There is nothing to stop you from celebrating their feast!

People like to reflect on greatness and to make lists of the ten or hundred greatest men and women in history. Or in Britain, or in America, or in the world.

When the Brits make lists of the greatest men and women in history the list tends to be dominated by Brits, American lists by Americans, German lists by Germans etc.  So from Britain you get Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Lord Nelson, Winston Churchill, of course – and always Shakespeare – dominating the lists.

American lists of the great men and women in history are dominated by Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and so on. Of course, William Shakespeare is always there.

A lot depends on who it is compiling the list. I have seen lists that are dominated by men of war and lists dominated by religious figures. American lists tend to leave Darwin out. For some reason Americans generally have more of a dread than an admiration for him, even though he changed our understanding of life on earth more profoundly than anyone else.

I have seen some strange things on the lists I have looked at. Take Shakespeare out of the equation because he is usually there, but, having said that, I sometimes wonder what is going on in people’s minds. Mother Theresa among the top twenty greatest men and women in history? And Billy Graham?

Some historical figures have become legends, their stories reinvented as fiction and told to children in school and so you get people like Florence Nightingale as one of humanity’s greatest people. And David Livingstone! Where is Rip van Winkle on the lists? His presence wouldn’t surprise me.

In a recent list compiled by a British tourist organisation, totaltravel.com, the list went like this: William Shakespeare; Winston Churchill; Sir Christopher Wren; Queen Victoria; John Lennon; Isaac Newton; David Hockney; Charles Darwin; Boudicea : C. 30 – 62.

John Lennon? That great? David Hockney? And Darwin so far down? The compiler was probably trying not to put American tourists off.

In 2003 the BBC world satellite news conducted a poll of overseas listeners and here is their list.

Sir Isaac Newton • Winston Churchill • Princess Diana • William Shakespeare • Charles Darwin • John Lennon • Isambard Kingdom Brunel • Queen Elizabeth I • General Oliver Cromwell • Admiral Horatio Nelson

Shakespeare comes fourth to Princess Diana’s third. What can one say? When it’s left to democracy and you vote on who were the best writers of all time, here in the UK you get people like Jeffrey Archer and JK Rowling topping the polls. I wonder what that just goes to show? I wouldn’t have Archer in the top million writers.

One thing is clear. Shakespeare is consistently on the lists, and somewhere near the top. If you were to find a way of analysing the lists and making an aggregate I think you would find that Shakespeare is The Man.

It seems to be catching. But after all, this is the second Elizabethan age so harking back to the golden age of English theatre shouldn’t be surprising. Sam Wannermaker’s Globe Theatre in London has proved a great success and now it’s the turn of the North of England.

Dame Judi Dench, Shakespearean actor and movie star, won awards for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in the movie Shakespeare in Love. After the actors and crew had packed up and gone  home she was given the set of the film as a gift. The oak timbers have been stored in a warehouse since it was dismantled after the completion of the filming and now she is exploring the possibility of turning the set into a Shakespeare centre in York, the city of her birth.

Dame Judi wants to see the set turned into a full-scale replica of the Rose theatre, which stood close to the Globe on the south bank of the Thames and was also used by Shakespeare. The actress has donated the set to the touring British Shakespeare Company to use as a permanent Shakespeare centre in the north of England.

There has been a long-standing campaign for recognition of Shakespeare’s northern links, after suggestions that the Bard fled to Lancashire after prosecution at Stratford-upon-Avon for poaching deer.

This will certainly be a good start.

sam wannemaker at shakespeare's globe

It’s a wise child that knows its own father. (That’s a reversal of ‘It’s a wise father that knows his own child’ from ‘The Merchant of Venice’!)

There is a BBC television show – ‘Who do you think you are?’ where well-known people are offered resources and researchers to look into their background and then present an account of that on television.

Recently, Zoe Wannemaker, daughter of Sam Wannemaker, the American actor who built the Globe Theatre in London, was one of the show’s subjects.

How long has it taken us to learn some of the lessons Shakespeare’s plays offer us? Even in 1956 the two democracies of Britain and the United States were persecuting people for their beliefs and opinions. Sam Wannemaker was a victim of persecution in both democracies, as Zoe discovered as a result of her research for the TV show.

Wannemaker became a communist in 1943 after playing a Russian soldier at the National Theatre in Washington. He moved to Britain in 1951 as the communist witch-hunt was hotting up and actors were prevented from working.

The US Foreign Office was in close contact with MI5, however, and while the pursuit of communists was not as ferocious in the UK, his ‘ciminal’ files follwed him and MI5 recommended that the Wannemaker family be interned. That wasn’t done but his application for permanent residence in the UK was turned down when he applied in 1955.

In 1957 the UK authorities changed their mind and he was granted indefinite stay in Britain. The file entry includes ‘The Wanamakers have not come to adverse security notice for some years.’

Sweet.

Wannemaker went on to be a national treasure and hero because of his work on the Globe project, and the Theatre stands, not only as a wonderful memorial to Shakespeare, but a fitting one to Wannemaker too.

Shakespeare in txt spk

NoSweatShakespeare aims to present Shakespeare to our own generation as exciting and relevant…However, as children and young people all around the world are obliged to encounter his plays as part of their formal education, teachers and students are forever looking for resources that will give them a better understanding of the texts.

During the past twenty years there has been a major effort by the world’s English teachers to find or invent ways of having fun with Shakespeare in English lessons.

I read recently that politicians in England have criticised teachers for accepting ‘text-speak’ in English assignments. When I looked into it a bit more I found that politicians in the United States, Australia and New Zealand have expressed a similar horror at the idea.

But what could be more relevant to the modern teenager?

Here’s a challenge for you. Read these pieces of  text-speak and see if you can place them. I think Shakespeare would smile if he could see them.

‘2 b, r nt 2 b dat iz d Q wthr ts noblr n d mnd 2 sufr d slngs & arowz of outrAjs fortn r 2 tAk armz agnst a C f trblz, & by oposn nd em?’

‘2mrw & 2mrw & 2mrw crEpz n dis pety plAs frm dA 2 dA 2 d lst silabl of rcrdd tIm & al our ystdAz hv lItd f%lz d way 2 dsty def…tis a tAl tld by an ejit, ful of snd & fury sgnfyn nutin.’

‘bt, sft! wot lIt thru yndr wndo brAkz? Ts d Est, & Juliet iz d sn. ArIs, fair sn, & kil d envios m%n, hu iz alredi sk & pAl w grEf, dat thou hr mAd art fr mo fair thn she.’

‘& gntlmn n Englnd, nw a-bed shl fnk thmslvs acrsd dey wr not hr, & hld thr mnh%dz chEp whl NE spk dat fort w us on St Crspns dA’

I’ll give you a clue. They come from Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. (not in that order, though)

I don’t care what the politicians think. Most of them can’t use text-speak but the students they are critcising can speak and write ‘proper’ English so they have an additional language that their critics don’t. And translating Shakespeare into text-speak is not only fun but makes them concentrate unwittingly on the language of Shakespeare. It’s an English teacher’s dream come true!!

the rowdy theatre crowd

I came across an article in the August 2^nd edition of London’s Sunday Times.

“A number of West End theatres are now employing bouncers to cope with intoxicated patrons who fight, fondle one another and even urinate in the auditorium.

The yobbish behaviour has led to theatregoers being ejected during performances and police being called to some of London’s most successful shows.

One production was interrupted after a woman was caught “pleasuring” her partner in the stalls. And the cast of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music were stunned to see an audience member walk over to the side of the stage and relieve himself.

Critics believe the vulgar antics have been fuelled by falling ticket prices designed to attract younger audiences and the ease with which theatregoers can take alcohol into the auditorium.

Police have been called on occasion to deal with troublemakers.

Meanwhile, the audience for Dirty Dancing, a musical based on the Hollywood film, has been likened to a “bear pit” by insiders who insist that patrons — many of whom turn up drunk — have to be regularly removed from the premises.

Desmond Atuehene, 46, who works on the door of the Prince of Wales theatre, where Mamma Mia! is playing, said: “When hen parties come, they are always drunk but you just have to ignore them. Two months ago a drunk guy came in and assaulted me.”

Some patrons have been known to let their phones ring and even take calls while a play is running. Rosamund Pike, the film and stage actress, , who recently appeared opposite Dame Judi Dench in Madame de Sade, has seen someone in the front row texting another patron further back in the audience.

Some theatregoers seem to have no qualms about joining in with the cast. Greta Scacchi, who appeared last year in Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, said: “Someone in the audience called out ‘It’s on the table’ during a particularly dramatic moment. During another performance of the same play, Scacchi recalled someone falling asleep in the front row and snoring loudly.

A combination of factors have been cited for deteriorating standards of behaviour. Some theatre managers have been blamed for creating a climate that deliberately appeals to the Big Brother generation — including offering tickets for as little as £10.”

Well! What’s new? Going to the theatre in Shakespeare’s London was the most popular form of entertainment. Modern theatre-going in London has been, until the current efforts to make theatre more accessible, an elitist activity. But with the cheaper tickets it begins to resemble Elizabethan theatre-going. In Shakespeare’s time everyone went to the theatre. Richer patrons could afford to sit in expensive seats and indeed, the very rich bought tickets to sit on the stage itself. But most of the audience paid a penny to stand in the large area between the stage and the seating. They were the groundlings and, not being raised as well as the higher classes, they set the rowdy tone for performances. But in any case, unlike today’s audiences, it was customary to make direct vocal responses to the performance.

Commentators of the time observed that missiles might be used not only to hasten the beginning of a performance but also to stop it, and even to make the players offer a different play. In the modern theatre ice cream and other delights are sold. In Elizabethan theatres they sold oranges and if you didn’t like someone’s acting or wanted to change the play you hurled oranges at the players.

Pickpockets and prostitutes plied their trade in the theatres. There was no question of calling in the police if you caught someone picking your pocket. If a pickpocket was caught he could expect to be dealt with by a form of mob rule. Will Kemp in 1600 wrote of cutpurses being tied to one of the stage pillars “for all the people to wonder at, when at a play they are taken pilfring.”

There is nothing new under the sun, as Shakespeare himself observed.

Language is a wonderful thing. We often choose our words carefully, depending on the occasion. But most of the time we are in informal situations, with our friends, classmates, colleagues and so on and then we go onto auto-pilot and our language just flows. Have you thought about the impossibility of speaking English without using metaphors? It’s impossible. Even just saying ‘I’m freezing’, or ‘I died laughing’, or ‘I see what you’re getting at’ – the list can go on forever – we are using the richness of poetic English in everything we say. But even more, we can’t get through a day without quoting Shakespeare. And we’re not even thinking about it.

There is a poster used in almost every English classroom in England that shows a bit of that. It was devised by a famous English journalist, Bernard Levin, published in The Times newspaper some years ago, and this is it:
If you cannot understand my argument and declare it’s Greek to me, you are quoting Shakespeare. If you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare. If you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare. If you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied – a tower of strength – hoodwinked or been in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows – made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play – slept not one wink – stood on ceremony – danced attendance on your lord and master – laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift – cold comfort, or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days, or lived in a fool’s paradise, why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are as good luck would have it, quoting Shakespeare. If you think it is high time, and that that is the long and the short of it, if you believe that the game is up, and that the truth will out, even if involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low  – till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge at one fell swoop – without rhyme or reason, then to give the devil his due if the truth were known for surely you have a tongue in your head, you are quoting Shakespeare. Even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a doornail, if you think I am an eyesore – a laughing stock – the devil incarnate – a stony-hearted villain – bloody-minded, or a blinking idiot, then by jove – o lord- tut, tut! – For goodness sake – what the dickens! – but me no buts – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

How’s that?

In the last half century there have been some great speeches by American presidents and some have been wonderful orators. But there has been a striking lack of Shakespeare quotations and that’s strange when you think about it: Shakespeare had something beautiful, concise and definitive to say about every imaginable situation.

Abraham Lincoln was one president who used Shakespeare liberally. He was fascinated by Shakespeare and was an enthusiastic theatre-goer, which was quite literally the death of him, assassinated, ironically by John Wilkes Booth, a member of the renowned Shakespearen theatrical family. Lincoln was particularly fond of Macbeth and perhaps a victim of the Macbeth curse. In productions of the play members of the company will never utter the word “Macbeth” because of the bad luck it will bring them and refer to the play as “The Scottish play.”

President Obama has yet to quote Shakespeare in a speech but I fear for his safety because he has uttered the dreaded word. On a trip to Ford’s Theatre, site of Lincoln’s assassination, Obama paid tribute to the 16th president’s ability to recall passages of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth. It’s quite alarming!

In his inaugural speech the President came close to quoting Shakespeare, echoing Richard III’s “now is the winter of our discontent” with “this winter of our hardship”. He used the phrase again more recently in a news conference, referring to the economic downturn. But winter is only one of the seasons and perhaps the use of the phrase is an expression of hope that there will soon be an upturn. Perhaps he was implying an unspoken quotation for us to supply: “If winter comes can spring be far behind?”