The sun comes out, the shorts go on and the mozzies bite me. It’s a game we play each year as they make a bid for my 8% of the population blood (it’s good stuff) and I try to exterminate them. I think they are winning.
This led me, being a literary type, to thinking about the texts and authors that suffer from a lack of love. They buzz around us through GCSEs, and nibble into us through sixth form, but many don’t feel the love despite them clamouring for attention.
I am an avid fan of Shakespeare. I love the poetry. I actually laugh out loud at some of the jokes (I know, sorry). I think his understanding of the human condition is unsurpassed in literature. I would choose to read and teach Shakespeare. But as a teacher, I am very aware that I’m in the minority. Most people find him a slog, unfunny and just something to be got through. Why’s that?
To be fair, some of the jokes don’t work today like apparently they did for the groundlings. It’s worth remembering that those penny stinkers might only be paying about £1 to watch the play, but £1 was worth so much more then, so it suggests this was something they really wanted to see. Most people there would have been illiterate, but we know his plays were very popular, so having a classical education clearly wasn’t seen as a necessity in order to enjoy Shakespeare. Rather like the ‘Globe on tour’ productions, there would have been minimal props and few real adaptations of costume. Elizabethans went to ‘hear’ a play, so it wasn’t spectacle per se that got them there. There were some exciting sound effects, and the theatre was of course set on fire by the stray firing of a cannon, but these weren’t the usual ideas.
Shakespeare does toilet humour really well. British people tend to rather like toilet humour. Our more prissy American cousins use euphemism such as ‘the restroom’/’the bathroom’ (because obviously you are going for a little nap or a bath) but we tend to call these things as they are. I put all the jokes about erections in this category too. The still rather inebriated porter explains the problems of sexual performance at some horribly early hour of the morning to a bemused Macduff and Lennox in Macbeth – I can definitely hear a Michael MacIntyre in that. When teaching this, it tends to be something we skip through quickly, but I feel there are some life lessons in his confession.
Then there is situation comedy. In ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (definitely an underrated play) there is a marvellous discovery of the young men one by one as they admit to being in love despite having a vow of celibacy by avoiding women. Oops. One of my favourite moments is in ‘Twelfth Night’ when Malvolio appears to Olivia in his yellow stockings. This is a gift scene to actors who understand comic timing. Both Olivia in her apparent confusion and Malvolio as he leers and beams can steal the show from the more poetic Viola at this point.
Given how popular ‘Love Island’ is, we know that watching other people jump into ill advised lust matches is a national pastime. And there is so much of this in Shakespeare. No Juliet no. You are not, at thirteen, ready to make good decisions about someone you will be married to for the rest of your life. Yes, even if he is the ‘insert boy band popular at the moment’ of his day! And you met him briefly, at a party where everyone was drinking and the atmosphere was pumping, so cold light of day, can you really see yourself looking at this chap over the dinner table for the next forty years? You know what happens, but Benvolio and Friar Lawrence have already pointed out this is not love but just very hormonal urges. Or Ophelia getting gaslit by Hamlet. Or Desdemona with the whole coercive control from Othello. The list goes on. You want to watch relationships crash and burn – watch a Shakespeare tragedy.
