Shakespeare’s ‘Cool’

Most would agree that making Shakespeare accessible to new generations of young people is vital if his works are to endure, as they have endured now for around four centuries; and whatever ‘means’ may be employed to realize this objective ought, on the face of it, to be justified. My concern, however, is that the ‘means’ are not always justified.

Evidently the fear among us is that Shakespeare may not be relevant. So theatres feel compelled to make his work relevant.
Today’s ‘cool’ thing to do with Shakespeare to make his work accessible is by speaking his lines indistinctly, by simplifying his plots, and/or by addressing profound philosophical discourse in a contemporaneous, colloquial, conversational style, and by costuming him in today's fashions,
Now don’t get me wrong here… (apart from the first which merely points to bad acting) I happen to believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things… so long as they remain true to the text.

Over the years I have encountered numerous attempts at making Shakespeare accessible to young people, to adults, and diverse cultures. Some of these productions have succeeded but the majority have, I believe, only resulted in a dumbing-down of Shakespeare’s work, exhibiting little palpable understanding of what really makes ‘Shakespeare’ Shakespeare.
Of course, if we don't want Shakespeare to die, or to become the preserve of a narrow elite, or what the highly respected Shakesperean director, Michael Bogdanov, once referred to as “The Dead-Hand of Academia”, then we must reinterpret him in modern day terms… so long as we remain true to the text.

Bogdanov also said… “There is in today's theatre world what I call THE SHAKESPEARE INDUSTRY. It has sprung from academia, where cultural historians, English professors and inexperienced theorists conspire to write original theses exhuming the true meaning behind the writings of the man from Stratford. Papers roll. Documents flow. Conferences are held. Opinions are spoken. There is Hamlet's Oedipus Complex and Cleopatra's Edifice Envy. There is post-modernism, pre-structuralism, multiculturalism and deconstructivism. There is the politically correct and there is the politically incorrect and there is the politically indifferent. Where, oh where, in all this contorted analysis, is the Shakespeare who first touched our hearts and minds?”

Personally I believe the answer lies in exposing people to Shakespeare as performance; after all, Shakespeare wrote dialogue for his plays, not literature; getting someone to experience, in action, the words of Shakespeare as a spoken language is by far the best solution, whereby they may get in touch with the play and the text both corporeally and intellectually, and consequently experience the plays at an emotional level.
When the Bard's plays are taught as literature, the work can seem dry and the language archaic, therefore we need to educate people, both young and old, to enjoy Shakespeare; letting them see and participate in it as theatre, as a play, rather than as literature, will encourage this… so long as we remain true to the text.

I must disagree with those who believe that because the language of Shakepeare’s time has changed to what it is today, children don't, or won't, understand it. I've worked with young people who not only understood it, but understood it better and grasped it more quickly than many adults I've worked with. When it is approached in the right way, children see the characters and situations and don't get hung up on the language the way adults do. They drop right into it without a problem. Shakespeare's “cool” - kind of like "rap" or other young slang. It's just another way of speaking and kids are into that.