Our Shakespeare

On the first weekend of the semester, my Shakespeare students and I saw a joint Guthrie Theatre/Acting Company production of “Julius Caesar” in Minneapolis. Given the large, rolling video-wall that was projecting a dozen TV news commentators as we entered the seventh-story black-box theatre, it didn’t take much savvy to recognize that this “Julius Caesar” was going to be set in the present.No surprise, then, when the Roman Tribunes of the first scene walked out in business attire or when the mob held up “OCCUPY ROME!” signs and threw obscene gestures at those well-dressed representatives of the 1%.

Someone, somewhere—perhaps it was in a review—suggested that the contemporary setting would probably upset academic purists. But, really, academics are the last people to be purists about contemporary settings for Shakespeare. Dressing Shakespeare characters in suits isn’t even within shouting distance of being avant-garde. There are more films based on Shakespeare’s life and works than on any other author. Can you guess how many of those films use original settings and costuming?

Actually, you can guess all you want, because I have no idea what the number might be. But I do know that the term “original settings and costuming” is itself problematic. For many Shakespeare plays the setting is ambiguous. Is “Hamlet” set in the Renaissance (the play does include a lot of 16th century references) or in the Middle Ages (the oldest surviving “Hamlet” story was evidently first written down in the very medieval year 1216)? Is “Measure for Measure” set in Vienna, where the characters say it occurs, or in London, to which there are some obvious references? Many other Shakespeare plays have a similar mix of content that reflects quite distinct time periods and settings.

And then there’s costuming. We actually don’t know exactly how Shakespeare’s plays were costumed, even in the case of a play like “Julius Caesar” which has a precise setting (Rome, 44 BCE for the opening scenes). The one surviving Renaissance drawing of a Shakespeare play, the Peacham drawing of “Titus Andronicus,” another play with a Roman setting, is completely ambiguous: no one knows if the drawing even documents an actual production, since the combination of characters it represents don’t ever appear on the stage at the same time. But it is interesting to note that the drawing shows a mixture of Roman and Renaissance costumes and props. Perhaps “original costuming” was itself often at least partly “modern dress.”

Our class had interesting things to say about the Guthrie “Julius Caesar” setting. We debated whether that cool and reserved black man playing Caesar was meant to evoke Barack Obama. If so, that assassination scene becomes even more chilling. We noted that the “Occupy Rome” scene blurred the status of the Roman Tribunes by making them distinct from the protesting commoners. We noted that killing a famed Roman general with a large, pointed letter opener has different connotations than stabbing him with the kind of daggers that Roman soldiers would have carried into battle.

In the midst of this discussion one student noted that after a couple of scenes he quit noticing the modern setting, or noticing the setting at all. That has probably happened to a lot of us, even if we’re trying to remain open to the full impact the production is aiming for. Those Shakespearean words can sometimes sing so spiritedly that the lines really do start to sound like the sentiments of a timeless human being. After Antony has finished negotiating with Caesar’s killers and is left alone on stage, he talks honestly to Caesar’s body:

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times. (3.1.257–260)

After this beautiful expression of his pained love for Caesar, Antony begins to prophecy that Caesar’s assassination will bring “domestic fury and fierce civil strife” and “blood and destruction.”

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge. . .

Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice

Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial (3.1.273–278)

Even if you don’t get every nuance of that language (“confines” = in these regions), you can feel the frightening power in the words. It doesn’t much matter that “havoc” is first used in English as a verb meaning “to devastate or lay waste; to slaughter and pillage” in 1576, over 1600 years after Antony’s speech. It doesn’t matter whether you understand precisely the comparison underlying the image of the “dogs of war” (they’re being released from their leashes). Nor does it matter whether the speaker is wearing a toga, a poofy-sleeved Renaissance cape over a tight doublet or a slick Wall Street suit and tie. As you read, and as the Guthrie Antony delivered the lines, you’ll feel yourself in the presence of a universal voice and you’ll shiver with a universal human fear. At least that’s what I did.

I wish you all could have been there. Keep your eyes open for some on-campus bits of Shakespeare as the semester proceeds.