Intentions, Intentions
Back from Banff. I had a good time and heard many interesting ideas bandied about. Sadly, however, no one had anything to say about Lear, specifically. It seems the hottest Shakespeare plays for academics these days are All’s Well That Ends Well, The Winter’s Tale, and the ever-popular histories, especially Henry IV and V.
One of the most intriguing presentations, however, was about The Tempest. David Scott Kastan, a prof from Columbia University in New York City, gave a plenary speech entitled “Is The Tempest a New World Play?: Presentism, Historicism, and the Ethics of Criticism.” That’s a lot of “isms,” I know, but this is the same scholar who wrote “Shakespeare After Theory,” so his ideas aren’t that inaccessible. He was essentially drawing a distinction between scholars who attempt to read The Tempest as it would have been read in the Renaissance (“historicists”) and scholars who read the play through a contemporary filter of some sort (“presentists”)—post-colonialism is the most common example, although feminism and Freudian analysis crop up often too.
I’m oversimplifying to an absurd degree here, but essentially Kastan argued that we owe it to the literature we study to at least give historicism a try before we start applying all our own agendas to the text. It’s a somewhat controversial stance, because over the last 20 or 30 years most scholars have come to the conclusion that we simply can’t read for intention—that is, we are too far away in time to have a prayer of knowing what Shakespeare wanted us to get out of his plays, and so we have to acknowledge our own readerly biases, and view the plays accordingly.
What do I think? I think the argument is valuable in an academic context, but it’s moot in the theatre for two reasons. First, a group of actors (and designers, and crew etc.) can’t afford to follow one single “intention,” even if it happens to be the right one (ie. Shakespeare’s). It would make the play static and uninteresting. Theatre thrives because of its many voices and perspectives—at least one of which is historical (the author’s, I mean), but many of which are contemporary, and in many different ways.
Second, I could try to do a production that reflects Shakespeare’s intention with the text at every turn, but the audience would contemporize it through their own receptions. This experiment is ongoing at the New Globe Theatre in London, where Shakespeare’s plays are routinely done with ultra-traditional costumes and staging practices in an environment that strives to recreate the original theatrical circumstances as closely as possible. But guess what? The people who attend those plays are twenty-first century tourists and theatre fans. They dress like modern folks, they talk like modern folks, and you can be sure that they react to those plays like modern folks. They’re presentists, and even if you stuff them in a historicist box and seal it with a big historicist bow, they will still be in the Now.
Does this mean we shouldn’t try to ascertain Shakespeare’s intentions from his plays? Here’s my answer to that (ridiculously oversimplified again, but hey—this is a blog): Shakespeare had one intention for all of his plays, and one alone: he wanted them to be performed. Every time they were staged in the Old Globe, every time they’re staged in the New Globe, and every time they’re staged anywhere else, they’re different. He knew that. All he wanted was to see them done. So when we produce new versions (and even adaptations) of his plays for “presentist” audiences...we’re still serving his intentions. Everybody wins.
Okay, that’s it for theory for awhile, I promise. Next up, some rudimentary ruminations about characters, starting with...oh, let’s say...Lear, perhaps?
One of the most intriguing presentations, however, was about The Tempest. David Scott Kastan, a prof from Columbia University in New York City, gave a plenary speech entitled “Is The Tempest a New World Play?: Presentism, Historicism, and the Ethics of Criticism.” That’s a lot of “isms,” I know, but this is the same scholar who wrote “Shakespeare After Theory,” so his ideas aren’t that inaccessible. He was essentially drawing a distinction between scholars who attempt to read The Tempest as it would have been read in the Renaissance (“historicists”) and scholars who read the play through a contemporary filter of some sort (“presentists”)—post-colonialism is the most common example, although feminism and Freudian analysis crop up often too.
I’m oversimplifying to an absurd degree here, but essentially Kastan argued that we owe it to the literature we study to at least give historicism a try before we start applying all our own agendas to the text. It’s a somewhat controversial stance, because over the last 20 or 30 years most scholars have come to the conclusion that we simply can’t read for intention—that is, we are too far away in time to have a prayer of knowing what Shakespeare wanted us to get out of his plays, and so we have to acknowledge our own readerly biases, and view the plays accordingly.
What do I think? I think the argument is valuable in an academic context, but it’s moot in the theatre for two reasons. First, a group of actors (and designers, and crew etc.) can’t afford to follow one single “intention,” even if it happens to be the right one (ie. Shakespeare’s). It would make the play static and uninteresting. Theatre thrives because of its many voices and perspectives—at least one of which is historical (the author’s, I mean), but many of which are contemporary, and in many different ways.
Second, I could try to do a production that reflects Shakespeare’s intention with the text at every turn, but the audience would contemporize it through their own receptions. This experiment is ongoing at the New Globe Theatre in London, where Shakespeare’s plays are routinely done with ultra-traditional costumes and staging practices in an environment that strives to recreate the original theatrical circumstances as closely as possible. But guess what? The people who attend those plays are twenty-first century tourists and theatre fans. They dress like modern folks, they talk like modern folks, and you can be sure that they react to those plays like modern folks. They’re presentists, and even if you stuff them in a historicist box and seal it with a big historicist bow, they will still be in the Now.
Does this mean we shouldn’t try to ascertain Shakespeare’s intentions from his plays? Here’s my answer to that (ridiculously oversimplified again, but hey—this is a blog): Shakespeare had one intention for all of his plays, and one alone: he wanted them to be performed. Every time they were staged in the Old Globe, every time they’re staged in the New Globe, and every time they’re staged anywhere else, they’re different. He knew that. All he wanted was to see them done. So when we produce new versions (and even adaptations) of his plays for “presentist” audiences...we’re still serving his intentions. Everybody wins.
Okay, that’s it for theory for awhile, I promise. Next up, some rudimentary ruminations about characters, starting with...oh, let’s say...Lear, perhaps?
posted by Scott Sharplin at 3:22 p.m.
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