Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: The Genius of Shakespeare

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Arguably the world’s greatest ever dramatist, after five and a half centuries William Shakespeare remains as popular as ever. But how did he became so famous? How did later authors boost his reputation? And why has Shakespeare stayed supreme above all other writers? Rob Weinberg asks the big questions to Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dazzler's History. I've got another episode for you today from our new history hit series, How and Why History. Have a listen to this. It's one of history's most famous and enduring men of words. A little guy called William Shakespeare with one of my favourite historians in the country, Professor Gerry Broughton. So if you like it, you ought to search How and Why History every year at your podcast. Lots of you subscribing, so thank you for that. There's a new episode every Tuesday and Friday. This coming Friday, How and Why History looks at podcast, lots of you subscribing, so thank you for that. There's a new episode every Tuesday and Friday. This coming Friday, How and Why History looks at the troubles in Northern Ireland. If you want even more How and Why History, I don't blame you, but if you want even more, there are 30 episodes for subscribers over at History Hit TV.

In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this deep dive into the genius of William Shakespeare. All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Timeless quotes from William Shakespeare,

the greatest writer in the English language and arguably the world's greatest ever dramatist. After five and a half centuries, Shakespeare remains as popular as ever, studied, performed and reinterpreted throughout the world. But just how did Shakespeare become so famous? And how has he remained transcendent above all others? I'm Rob Weinberg, and to help us answer the big questions about this towering figure in history, I've been speaking to Gerry Broughton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary

University of London. This is How and Why History. Gerry, thanks for joining us. Thank you. How did Shakespeare become so famous? It's a really good question because he is the great global icon of Englishness and probably literature generally today in the world. How and why? Partly, I think, because he's a great writer, but I don't think that answers all the reasons why. I think it's also connected to the spread of Englishness. I think there's an imperial issue there about the way in which he gets taken up in later centuries as this icon of Englishness, just at the time at which the British Empire is spreading across the globe. And now I think there's a way in which the power of the writing is so transcendent

and he can cross so many different cultures that he is the great global icon today, but not without issues, not without problems, I don't think. When did Shakespeare live? Shakespeare is really interesting because he straddles two great moments in English history, which I think is one of the reasons he has such longevity and power. He lives in the period 1564 to 1616, which crosses the Tudor and the Stuart dynasties. So he famously lives under Queen Elizabeth I, who reigns from 1558 to 1603. But then the second half of Shakespeare's career is under a second monarch, James I, who's a Jacobean Stuart ruler from Scotland. So he crosses these two great

moments and he writes very differently across those two periods. And that's really important for the way in which we think about the kind of drama that he produces and also that he's lived between country and city. Famously he's born and brought up in Stratford where he lives for the first 20 years of his life and then he appears in London, the great urban conurbation in the late 1580s just as commercial theatre is taking off in London, a new form and Shakespeare is right at the heart of that. So where were Shakespeare's plays initially performed and who performed them? Shakespeare's working for a company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men,

which is one of these companies that are set up in the 1580s, usually by elite aristocratic men who are bankrolling the creation of these companies, which are commercial and they're working in open-air theatres. Shakespeare's company is working in playhouses called The Curtain and The Theatre. Before The Globe opens in 1599, these are big open-air amphitheatres that you could watch plays during the day. And that shapes the kind of plays that you get. So these big, grand history plays. You think of plays like the Henry VI plays, which are some of the first ones that he creates in the early 1590s with the company.

And Shakespeare's playing in them as well. This is one of the interesting things about him. He's not only writing the plays, but he's actually playing in his own works, and I think that gives him a certain angle on the kind of work that gets made. Was Shakespeare considered something special then in his own lifetime, or was he seen as one of many talented playwrights and poets? He was just really seen as one among many. He, I think, has a real inferiority complex around a figure who is regarded as much more innovative in his day,

it's Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare's always trying to play catch up with Marlowe. Marlowe famously dies in the early 1590s, so from then on Shakespeare is out of his shadow, but he's also working with a bunch of other writers who are seen as equally brilliant, equally talented people like Thomas Nash, who we believe collaborates with Shakespeare. There's a lot of collaboration in this period. In fact, collaboration is the norm rather than the exception. He's also writing other people's plays, so he's part of a whole very complicated milieu of writers

working in this incredibly new institution. Theatre's not new, but commercial theatre, putting bums on seats for money is, and that's what Shakespeare is part of. But he's just one of many other writers, aspirational, lower middle class writers. However, we do have chatter about him. Famously, a writer called Green says that he's an upstart crow. There's certainly a way in which people are starting to see him as a bit of an uppity writer, he's a bit of a show-off. But again, he's still just part of a group of many talented writers

who are doing poetry and drama. So it's not until later that he's given this exceptional, almost godlike status. That's not the case in the Elizabethan period. Was he initially known then more as a poet than a playwright? He's a man of the theatre initially, but his reputation is established through poetry because in 1593 he publishes a poem called Venus and Adonis,

which is a huge hit. It's published and printed and gains him a certain reputation as being a rather risque, rather sexy writer because it's talking about the goddess Venus chasing after a young boy called Adonis and it is rather sexually sort of quite risky, a bit racy. People comment a lot on this poem. It's interesting because Shakespeare seems to write it because the theatres are closed because of plague at that point, so it's also a bit of an accident. But he certainly regards himself as a poet who's writing drama, as most of his contemporaries did as well, because the notion of a dramatist in the commercial

context was still something seen as quite new and a little bit vulgar. So almost accidentally, his reputation is established as a poet because this carries on because he writes The Rape of Lucrece, another classical epic poem, and he's writing the sonnets throughout this period as well. So still a man of the theatre but certainly almost by happenstance a man who defines himself in terms of popular elements as a poet. defines himself in terms of popular elements as a poet. Did Shakespeare's fame come about more when the texts of his plays became more available in print? To some extent.

What's fascinating is after he dies in 1623, seven years after his death, a bunch of his friends from the King's Men, who are the company that he works for with the Royal Seal of Approval. James I says that they can use this name, the King's Men. So his mates from the King's Men produce this posthumous collection of not really his complete works, although a lot of his works, we call it the First Folio. And that's very unusual. Only Ben Johnson's done a similar sort of collected works, which he does in 1616. And everybody's appalled by this says how absolutely vulgar of dramatists to put their work out in print because it's not really supposed to be it's not the done thing you do as a poet but you don't as a dramatist Shakespeare never really

is involved obviously because he's dead but it's interesting that that book the first folio I think does cement a certain version of his power his his fame, but it's created by the people. They say he's the great virtuoso dramatic poet, nobody else is as great as him, he stands alone. This is not the reputation he has during his lifetime and although some of his texts are published and printed in his lifetime, we see no evidence that he has any involvement in their publication. It's the publishers who publish them, and they say they're by William Shakespeare, but there's no evidence that he's involved in those publications.

So the print history is important for him, I think, but it's very much after he dies. Did the publication of them lead to other people putting the plays on in other places? Yes, that's certainly true, because once you have the printed text, then obviously they have a different kind of dissemination, and the texts do then have a different kind of life on the English stage, and then even beyond it, because we now know that by the very early 17th century, Shakespeare's plays are being performed in Germany, rather extraordinarily, with some of the commercial companies travelling to mainland Europe,

often during periods of political tension or plague if the English playhouses are closed. So if you have the printed book with you, then that certainly helps. So that is a really important dimension of Shakespeare's power, the power of his texts. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal j in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. To what extent was the adulation that Shakespeare received from other authors influential in raising his profile as one of the greats, if not the greatest? I think there's always that sense in which if you're a writer's writer then you're going to go far and really from those early rather snarky comments that you have somebody like Green saying that he's a bit of an upstart crow through people like Johnson, Ben Johnson again seeing him as a great rival but acknowledging that he sees him as an exceptional writer

then goes right through really the English canon you you know, Milton admiring him as well in the mid-17th century and really that moment when the romantics pick up Shakespeare, I think that that is a crucial shift in his fortunes where people like Wordsworth, Coleridge, even earlier Dr Johnson writing and editing Shakespeare and saying, you know, this man is extraordinary, there is something completely singular about his ability to write in the English language, which is something new. Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers. The poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers

a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world, nor by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers, or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions. They are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets, a character is too often an individual.

In those of Shakespeare, it is commonly a species. And I think that that changes the whole perception of who Shakespeare is, what he writes, and that's cemented clearly in the Victorian period when his works are then edited again and he becomes really just part of the DNA of English not just drama but also literature per se. There was a period the interregnum when all public stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers did Shakespeare's popularity suffer a decline at that point? Well everybody's did because the the texts weren't really available.

I don't really like the term interregnum because it suggests it's just an unfortunate Republican period and it's an aberration and we'll soon get back to being a nice royalist country. So I'm not very happy about it or the idea really that somehow it puts a block on Shakespeare because really there's generally a way in which the theatre goes into abeyance. because really there's generally a way in which the theatre goes into abeyance. But during the Restoration, the plays obviously appear again and Shakespeare's reputation is cemented again, although he's not the most popular. So Ben Jonson is equally as popular.

Interestingly, two subsequent playwrights who work in The King's Men and Shakespeare, we believe collaborates with late in his career, are more popular than Shakespeare. And that's Beaumont and Fletcher who are producing these rather sort of precious, tragicomic plays. But they're actually more popular than Shakespeare in The Restoration. When people then also start rewriting his plays. So you get people like a character called Nahum Tate, doesn't like King Lear. So he changes the ending, he rewrites it. And Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after and the restoration is an interesting moment where it

takes Shakespeare but also there's all kinds of very very strange things with Shakespeare as well but there's a sense in which his popularity is clearly represented in the fact that people feel they can do that with him. So was it really then in the Victorian era that Shakespeare emerges and dominates the stage of London? I think the mid to late 18th century is the point where Shakespeare really becomes totally predominant on the stage. So you have these great figures, impresarios like David Garrick. Garrick plays all the great roles and says, you know, Shakespeare is all of life and creates this very, I think, overblown version of Shakespeare, which is also sat alongside the way in which there's been a the first scholarly editions of the plays and once you have that that sits alongside a theatrical tradition of people like Garrick being able to play these plays again and again the great figures the great tragic heroes but then also Garrick we know going

from playing Lear almost one night to playing Romeo the other night within that rather histrionic melodramatic tradition that's when you really get the confirmation that Shakespeare is the great English playwright and everybody else really Marlowe, Johnson they all fall away so even by the early Victorian period I think that tradition of Shakespeare as the preeminent figure both in terms of who you read you know at home but in terms of what you see on the stage as well. Those two things have come together absolutely. And from then on, that's it. He is the great bard. How important to being a star was an actor's ability to do Shakespeare well? It's from people like Garrick in the later 18th century that I think you get a notion of testing

your ability as an actor alongside the canon of Shakespeare. So as a younger actor you play many of the comedy roles, you play Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing, you then move on to playing somebody like Henry V and then in later years your ability is defined by taking on the great tragic roles Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and ultimately Lear and that's something that I think from the 18th century is very much established as part of what the great actor does it defines the great Victorian actors and still today will define somebody like Ian McKellen. McKellen has gone through all those great roles and quite recently said that he would take on King Leo one last time.

And that's really a measure of saying that's the ultimate, that's the summit of what you do as a great classical actor, to take on that repertoire and to succeed is seen as a measure of whether you can crack those great roles or not. How did Shakespeare's reputation spread to other European stages? The reputation is an interesting one. It gets into Germany very early. People often say that in the German language Shakespeare sounds better than in English. There's a great romantic German tradition which has co-opted Shakespeare in that way. Then I think it's very much not about a theatrical tradition, it's about a textual tradition. Catherine the Great in Russia is translating Shakespeare.

The Germans, as I was just saying, certainly become involved in that. People like Goethe, Schlegel, Schiller are saying this man is extraordinary and they're saying he's extraordinary because of his representation of the imagination. So the Romantics in Germany, of course, would say that because that's what they're trying to do so they see this abundant imaginative capacity in Shakespeare's work as of course do the English Romantics. It's then really a later moment it's really only I think a 19th 20th century moment that the theatrical tradition more internationally takes on Shakespeare. The French have always been a little bit reluctant because they don't really like the lack of classical unity perhaps in Shakespeare and I think there's probably been national rivalries. But then certainly I think from the 20th century the way in which the imperial power of Shakespeare had gone around the globe meant there was a sense in which you measure your own national theatre by your ability to work with Shakespeare

and I think that that's certainly the case now more than ever. And then Shakespeare works in different ways so it can be used around national struggles. I've worked very interestingly say in Brazil where Portuguese translations of a play like Mabeth are being used to mediate political tensions in terms of what's happened in Brazil over the last few decades, both in terms of imperial struggles and internal national struggles between right and left. And Shakespeare, I think, is just a really good vehicle internationally, globally, for different cultures to do that, to say well we measure our ability to have a debate around political discourse by how we can use Shakespeare to do that and

then also you can probably avoid forms of censorship because you can just say it's just an old play by an English playwright as well. So Shakespeare has this extraordinary ability to cross so many different areas and he himself I think in his own moment, of course working in a very politically volatile era, could suggest that he was engaging with politics and at another point could simply say, it's only a play, it's only entertainment.

But that's one of the great things about Shakespeare's work, that it cuts both ways, you can have it both ways, as you like it, as he himself would have said. How important has been the adoption of Shakespeare's characters into art, thinking of the pre-Raphaelite painters, for example, depicting Beatrice and Benedict, or in the 20th century in film,

those stories have spread even further. I think that they're now part of common culture, aren't they? I mean, you think about a phrase like to be or not to be, you think of a figure like Hamlet, most school children have some access to that story, Romeo and Juliet similarly. And I think that's what's interesting about Shakespeare, because many of his stories weren't original. He's taken them because he's a great Renaissance man. In that period, imitation of classical sources was seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. Today we call it plagiarism, but Shakespeare's borrowing all his stories. But he's very shrewdly taking those great iconic stories. You know, Romeo and Juliet,

it's the great love story. Hamlet, it's the great family tragedy in a way. It's also one of the great political tragedies. So the iconicity of those stories, I think, has now suffused common culture in a way, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad. There's a whole debate, say, around his representation, often of women, and you might want to question something of that. So you look at someone like Gertrude in Hamlet, not necessarily regarded as a very positive figure in contemporary culture. But what's great about it is you can have a debate. You can always use Shakespeare to have a debate

almost about anything that's going on within your common culture. You can somehow access that and use Shakespeare to have hopefully what you might call a dialogic conversation that's not one that's going to get nasty because that's the nature of theatre. Theatre is about an exchange of different ideas, of competing, often conflicting ideas and that's why I still turn to Shakespeare in that way often around trying to understand contemporary culture because you can at least have a debate I think that's really important and that's still why Shakespeare is relevant to us today. Professor Gerry Broughton thank you for joining us. Thank you.

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