by Robert R. Leichtman, M.D.

“The original version of Romeo and Juliet was very bad, I thought. I burned it.”

”All through the history of mankind, censorship has always appeared to protect public morals, but censorship has always been aimed at something else. It’s always political.”

”Behind the scenes the action was even more bawdy than it is in the modern theater.”

“The plays almost wrote themselves. The ideas came so clearly and so completely – not only to my mind but the company’s mind as well – that a play would almost write itself once we started working on it.”

“Any creative effort, any attempt to construct a tangible, physical reality from an idea, is a high form of magic.”

– William Shakespeare, speaking through the mediumship of D. Kendrick Johnson

Leichtman: Oh, yes. While we’re on this subject, would you comment on the role of the theater in your time as a vehicle for educating the masses, either in humanities or in history? Did you simply use the chronicles of the recent past for plots, or was there a deeper reason than that?

Shakespeare: One of the reasons for writing the so-called history plays was to bolster up Her Majesty’s position. I was commissioned by the court to do this, in a way. You would probably call this a kind of political propaganda nowadays, but bear in mind that the Queen had a rather difficult role in a difficult time, far before the ideas of Women’s Liberation.

I was happy to write those plays for that purpose, because after all, the Queen had created an atmosphere that made my work possible. It may be difficult, perhaps, for Americans to understand that people living under that particular monarch were very proud of the head of state. But we were, and we commoners were very happy to contribute to the well-being of the monarchy in whatever way we could. I suppose this kind of feeling can be seen in the films of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and the reaction of the common people to seeing her.

It may surprise people that I know about Queen Victoria, but I do.

Leichtman: Under King James, I suppose, you had even greater royal recognition and financial support. Did you find it easier to work during his reign?

Shakespeare: His reign was not as enlightened as Elizabeth’s, and in a way this made it much more difficult. We did receive support, but that particular reign was more interested in what you might nowadays call “blood and thunder” – plays that had more of an immediate impact upon an audience and less cultural content. The style in which I wrote under Elizabeth became more rare under James. Playwrights became more interested in presenting something exciting, something a little more suggestive, and something a little easier to follow. That’s what drew in the theater patrons under James.

In modem times, I know that people find my dialogue difficult to follow. They should keep in mind that English as it was spoken in my time, English as it is spoken at present, and American English are rather far apart. Modes of speech have changed with the times. After all, when I began my career, the mark of an intelligent man was being able to spell his name ten or fifteen different ways!

Indeed, it was part of my work – and I must say that I was encouraged a bit by patronage – to standardize spelling and grammar. That’s why you can recognize it now. My friend Chikamatsu had the same task given to him; almost every civilized country has had to “appoint” someone to do this particular piece of work. After all, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, language was in a state of chaos in comparison to your modern – dare I say scientific grammar. Had it not been for people such as me in English letters, it would be very difficult for an English-speaking scientist to write a technical paper about a scientific event. Language in my day – at the beginning of my career, anyway – was very unspecific. It was much more poetic than modern English, more akin to what is today commonly thought of as the Oriental approach to language, where the references are allusive and associative, rather than specific.You might say Oriental languages express an idea by “surrounding” it, rather than pinpointing it. Many Oriental countries even now have difficulty handling scientific ideas in their literature because of this.

Leichtman: Did this endeavor also include some regulation of pronunciation?

Shakespeare: Yes, and this is why it was thought best to do my work in a theatrical form – so it would help standardize the pronunciation. Now, this was not an effort that I was alone in – there were many people working on it.

Some of the plays were intended to be instructional in nature. Several of us worked over the ideas for the spelling, the grammar, and the pronunciation before the plays were ever produced – or published, as the case may be. Even in the theater now, there is this instructional aspect. Of course, your theater reaches more people than my theater did, and is more varied and subtle – sometimes even more sneaky.

Leichtman: How did you come by the idea that it was your work to add to the English language?

Shakespeare: It wasn’t merely my idea – it’s not something that entered into my head in that way. I was part of an intellectual movement that was growing at that time, and I was in a position where I could be more effective than other people in developing a mass awareness of grammar, spelling, and the like. Of course, we didn’t give spelling lessons on stage!

There were writings by other people at that time that set spelling and grammar, too. We frequently got together and discussed some of the problems over what you would call a tipsy evening, but this is the way things like that were handled – and still are.

Leichtman: That brings to mind: did you collaborate often with other playwrights? Did you often get together and exchange shoptalk?

Shakespeare: Oh, yes – any writer does this. I was privileged to have as acquaintances people of great wit and intelligence. They did influence my ideas, and I influenced theirs. I might say here that perhaps I influenced Bacon a few times, too. But I didn’t write any of his material – any more than he wrote mine.

Leichtman: That’s good to hear – I had worried about that. [Laughter.] I asked that question because there was a problem in those days, was there not, with the lack of copyright laws and protection? Wasn’t there occasional pirating of scripts?

Shakespeare: Oh, yes, and that used to be great fun, as a matter of fact. Being one who enjoyed adventures – sometimes even squabbles with people – it was at times great fun to steal a scene from someone else’s play.

Leichtman: Indeed, is there some confusion today because the earliest printed versions of some of your plays were really pirated versions, rather than the “pure” versions?

Shakespeare: Well, even up to the period of the Booths in your recent history, my plays were revised rather freely by whatever company was performing them. Actually, this is still true – whole scenes are frequently cut. This is all right, as long as the idea remains intact. For some audiences, it’s a good idea. We did it ourselves in fact – we added and cut, depending upon the times and even the conditions of the weather and the temper of the audience.

Leichtman: The original printed versions of your plays included virtually no stage directions and divisions of scenes and acts. Have modern producers done a fairly honorable job of interpreting these elements?

Shakespeare: We were just doing something that is now considered to be very modern. Owing to the nature of our stage structure, we performed nonstop – that is, we did not stop for acts. Once again, this has become the rule rather than the exception – at least, that’s what I’ve seen in taking a peek at your movies. Very seldom are there even intermissions. In my day, we could not afford intermissions, because frequently there would be fist-fights in the stalls. We shared this type of problem with the circuses (and there were circuses of a sort then), where the crowd sometimes gets very rowdy. When that happens, the circus usually breaks out in loud music and the clowns come out. We always had to be ready for this problem, too. We had emergency scenes – [General laughter.]

Well, our style of performance was influenced somewhat by the Italian commedia dell’arte, which had not become terribly popular in England but which many of us were familiar with. And so we had the equivalent of the lazzi – a character in Italian comedy who would come in if a scene got overlong. You see, the actors were good enough and had worked together enough that they would frequently extend a scene if they were getting a reaction from the audience. We had to have someone in the cast who could end the scene if the actors lost the audience or the continuity of the play.

Many of the plays played considerably longer than the versions you have of them now. Depending on the conditions and temper of the audience, sometimes we would extend them, sometimes shorten them.

Leichtman: Fancy that.

Shakespeare: Theater in those days was very rough and ready. [Laughter.]

Leichtman: And of course you weren’t forced to stop so the popcorn vendor could make his pennies.

Shakespeare: Well, we had orange vendors, and sweetmeat vendors… and sweet skin vendors. [Much laughter.] The actors did have to compete with those people, and they were more of a problem than popcorn vendors are nowadays. I remember that on numerous occasions we were inundated with ladies of the evening who were so noisy that the actors could not be heard. Of course, this was part of the fun of going to the theater in those days. And there were also times when some of the ladies on stage would be hawking their wares. This is why, incidentally, we would frequently cast a boy in a female role. At least it kept things in some kind of perspective. Actresses often got carried away. As I understand it, they still do sometimes.

In a way, it was a much more lively period – much more rough and ready – for the arts and the culture then. Nowadays, the Western tradition is a rich source for drama in your culture, and you seem to like the rough and ready quality of those stories. The West was the frontier in your culture; well, we had a “frontier” in our culture, too, but of a different sort. And whenever there’s a push toward the frontier in a culture, there’s always going to be that rough and ready attitude.

It’s been said that the main invention of the renaissance was the natural child. [Laughter.] I suppose this is true in a very superficial sort of way.

Leichtman: How popular was the theater in those days?

Shakespeare: Oh, it was very popular among certain types of people. It was this period which gave rise to the idea of “life upon the wicked stage,” after all. Many people went to the theater to make a date for the evening – hopefully with an actress and if not, then with a lady in the audience. Many of the court attended, but more for the purpose of liaisons than to see the play. Actually, the audience was almost as entertaining as the actors. It would be difficult to give you a full picture of the cacaphony of the theater of my time; everyone was enjoying himself. We always served food and drink, and everybody had a very, very good time. It was almost like a county fair, in a way.

Leichtman: You mean you didn’t have it in your union contract that the audience must be still and not eat during the performance? [Laughter.]

Shakespeare: Somehow, we managed without unions. At times we had to hang on by our fingernails, and were lucky to do so. It was a very exciting time, and I’m glad I lived through it. There were times when I didn’t think I was going to. Actors in those days really led a hand-to-mouth existence.

I know, Doctor, that you sometimes look down your nose at actors. But you’ve never acted, and you have no idea of the excitement of presenting a play before the audience and behind the scenes. And I might tell you that behind the scenes the action was even more bawdy than it is in modern theater. [Laughter.] One never knew when one’s dressing room was going to be hired by a duke to entertain a lady friend for what you would call a “quickie” – and we would call something similar. [More laughter and guffawing.] And there were times when one would barge into one’s dressing room to make a change while the duke and his lady were doing it. Not infrequently, the actors would join in and miss their cues! [Laughter.]

Paul: The Doctor and I were talking on the way down here, and he said that instead of writing a play and then finding a troupe to do it, you would create characters that fit the people in your own troupe –

Leichtman: You worked with a company.

Shakespeare: Yes. The company was very much set. We did have to make some alterations: a few of the plays were done with women who were then replaced with young men because of certain conduct that had to be censured.

We were very versatile – there were occasionally plays that had many female roles in them and we would cast both women and young men, just to cover all the parts. And many of us would have to play two or three characters in a play and change clothing on a dead run. Bear in mind that clothing in those days was rather more difficult to change – we did not have the convenient buttons, zippers, and hooks that you have now. Almost everything was laced together. Frequently we had to hire dressers or dress each other. Of course, even nowadays one sometimes has to sacrifice something of modesty in the dressing room in order to be able to make a scene on time. Then as now, this does tend to draw actors together as a group – they become more of a family, really.

Excerpt from Shakespeare Returns

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