1 00:00:00,490 --> 00:00:08,780 My name is Tiffany Stern, I teach English at University College Oxford, I teach 16th to 18th century literature. 2 00:00:08,780 --> 00:00:15,640 But what I specialise in is Shakespeare and the theatre of his time and also the theatre 16th to 18th century. 3 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:23,320 But I'm completely fascinated by Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, so that's particularly what I write about. 4 00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:31,960 SP2 -And your research in this field? My research in the field is a mixture of research into the theatre and research into the book. 5 00:00:31,960 --> 00:00:37,270 And I also edit quite a lot and editing helps me think through a number of those questions. 6 00:00:37,270 --> 00:00:43,120 What I'm currently writing about are snacks that you could buy in the theatre throughout performances. 7 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:48,940 And these are apples and pears and nuts and beer and wine. 8 00:00:48,940 --> 00:00:59,080 And I'm interested in Shakespeare putting on these amazing plays in front of an audience who are always a bit ready to be diverted by an apple. 9 00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:03,790 And I'm looking at ways Shakespeare must have had for dealing with this. 10 00:01:03,790 --> 00:01:11,680 And in particular, I'm thinking, here is a great writer, but he's also a shareholder in his theatre and he does want his theatre to be an exciting, 11 00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:17,290 bustling trading place because that's good in terms of money, but it's a bit bad in terms of his plays. 12 00:01:17,290 --> 00:01:21,250 And so that's what I'm thinking through currently this very instant. 13 00:01:21,250 --> 00:01:26,980 I'm also at present thinking about fairgrounds in Shakespeare's time and what Shakespeare 14 00:01:26,980 --> 00:01:31,510 Theatre may have borrowed from puppets and sort of low culture performing monkeys, 15 00:01:31,510 --> 00:01:38,500 that kind of thing. I'm very excited by context and by the nitty gritty and by those things which might seem incidental, 16 00:01:38,500 --> 00:01:44,200 I think turn out to be quite crucial to Shakespeare's theatre. Can you give us an example? 17 00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:49,360 Oh, yes. So, for instance, there's a moment in Romeo and Juliet, 18 00:01:49,360 --> 00:01:56,620 Romeo's friends can't find him and the hunting ground for him and they start saying stuff that sounds a bit weird. 19 00:01:56,620 --> 00:02:01,120 They're asking where he is and they say he hears nothing. 20 00:02:01,120 --> 00:02:06,970 He speaks nothing. He says nothing which to that effect. And then they say the ape is dead. 21 00:02:06,970 --> 00:02:09,220 And it's all really weird. Just sort of what are they saying? 22 00:02:09,220 --> 00:02:17,140 And when you look into it, what they're doing is they're going through a form of the patter that you went through with a performing monkey. 23 00:02:17,140 --> 00:02:24,040 What you did with a performing monkey was he had a performing monkey and then you would mention something really bad. 24 00:02:24,040 --> 00:02:32,950 But to those times, like the pope or the Spaniard or the Turk or something they really hated and your monkey would play dead. 25 00:02:32,950 --> 00:02:38,020 And then you go, oh, he does nothing. He's he doesn't move. Oh, no, my monkey's dead. 26 00:02:38,020 --> 00:02:42,610 Oh, I wish. Oh, if only Queen Elizabeth were here, then your monkey would spring to life. 27 00:02:42,610 --> 00:02:46,870 And what Romeo's friends are doing is they're pretending they're going through this ritual and they're 28 00:02:46,870 --> 00:02:53,170 pretending that Romeo is a dead monkey and then they're pretending that a wonderful word can bring him to life. 29 00:02:53,170 --> 00:02:57,550 And they think the word Rosalind can do that because they think Rosalind is his girlfriend. 30 00:02:57,550 --> 00:03:02,950 He's now actually in love with Juliet. So what's interesting to me is that's a whole bit of monkey patter. 31 00:03:02,950 --> 00:03:06,700 It's directly from kind of fairgrounds, but it's actually quite deep. 32 00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:09,790 It's to do with can names bring about life or death. 33 00:03:09,790 --> 00:03:16,900 And it's Prolexic, which is to say, it hints at what's to come, actually bad things to come, but through a medium of humour. 34 00:03:16,900 --> 00:03:22,780 But you need to understand low culture to know that. And that's one of the things that's interesting to me at present. 35 00:03:22,780 --> 00:03:27,340 So how would you say that studying the theatrical space, which is something else. 36 00:03:27,340 --> 00:03:31,040 Yeah. Enhance our understanding of texts. 37 00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:38,890 We know Shakespeare in book form looks a bit like Milton in book form, you know, but a book looks like another book. 38 00:03:38,890 --> 00:03:47,320 It looks like your bedside novel. But of course, what Shakespeare was writing was not originally something for anyone to sit around and read. 39 00:03:47,320 --> 00:03:57,460 He wasn't writing a book. He was writing a play and he was writing a play for a particular named Space and for particular named actors whom he knew. 40 00:03:57,460 --> 00:04:03,760 So I think what's exciting to me is to think about the actual context for which Shakespeare was writing. 41 00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:08,650 And when you do that, when you sort of make a play three dimensional, get it off the page. 42 00:04:08,650 --> 00:04:11,050 For one thing, you understand it better. 43 00:04:11,050 --> 00:04:18,190 And for another, you can get back some of the thrill and excitement of the occasion for which Shakespeare was writing. 44 00:04:18,190 --> 00:04:24,010 And I feel particularly with Shakespeare, once he's in a book and he's weighted down with footnotes, he's still really good. 45 00:04:24,010 --> 00:04:30,310 But, you know, you can lose the sense that he's tremendously good fun or terrifying and that 46 00:04:30,310 --> 00:04:35,500 the atmosphere of seeing him was thrilling and dreadful and extraordinary. 47 00:04:35,500 --> 00:04:39,340 And you'd come out exhausted and exhilarated from a trip to the theatre. 48 00:04:39,340 --> 00:04:46,660 I sort of like to get that back. So you definitely support avant garde productions of Shakespeare. 49 00:04:46,660 --> 00:04:53,470 For example, Macbeth stayed home with the RAF, with each other that well, you know, 50 00:04:53,470 --> 00:05:00,180 I'm completely conflicted about those because as I work on the theatre of Shakespeare's time, I'm tremendously. 51 00:05:00,180 --> 00:05:05,520 And how Shakespeare's stage was divided, that it had its own little heaven and its own little [INAUDIBLE]. 52 00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:11,010 And so when you said the words heaven and [INAUDIBLE], those had a kind of extra textural meaning. 53 00:05:11,010 --> 00:05:14,700 I'm interested in where the pillars were and how they became part of productions. 54 00:05:14,700 --> 00:05:16,800 I'm interested in the doors of entrance. 55 00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:23,670 So being interested in all of those things makes me conflicted about modern productions, because on one level, I don't like them. 56 00:05:23,670 --> 00:05:25,360 They're not dealing with any of that stuff. 57 00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:32,490 But on another level they are maybe the best way these days we can get back at the atmosphere from those days. 58 00:05:32,490 --> 00:05:35,400 So we might be losing the stuff but gaining the atmosphere. 59 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:43,740 And that makes me kind of like them a lot while simultaneously being annoyed if that's possible. 60 00:05:43,740 --> 00:05:54,670 And it's like, you know, so before theatres existed often plays tough place outdoors, sort of out the back of cars. 61 00:05:54,670 --> 00:06:01,030 And so you want to ask, did plays bring about theatres or did the theatrical space bring about plays? 62 00:06:01,030 --> 00:06:06,300 Oh, gosh. Well, that's an absolute chicken and egg question. It's very hard to know. 63 00:06:06,300 --> 00:06:12,300 All I can say is, particularly in England, it's better acting in a covid space than an uncovered space. 64 00:06:12,300 --> 00:06:15,630 I mean, I think if you watch kids, they play act the whole time. 65 00:06:15,630 --> 00:06:23,460 Acting is very natural and instinctive to us. A lot of jobs, mine, including included, involve quite a lot of acting. 66 00:06:23,460 --> 00:06:30,490 So I think everyone will always have acted. I suspect quite a lot of our theatre came out of things like the church. 67 00:06:30,490 --> 00:06:38,460 You have the church. So there's biblical stories are again a little dead texturally, but you enact them and they're extraordinary. 68 00:06:38,460 --> 00:06:45,360 And so I don't know which brought what about. But as soon as you start ranking acting, you've got some actors better than others. 69 00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:51,270 You want to see those ones and you want to see those ones in the best space possible and enervated space where the rest of you can stand, 70 00:06:51,270 --> 00:06:56,520 can stand around and so forth. So that's a question, the answer to which is hidden in the mists of time. 71 00:06:56,520 --> 00:07:02,370 But what I do think is everyone acts and the question which is levelled that the humanity. 72 00:07:02,370 --> 00:07:07,490 Yes. Why should we still study Shakespeare? Why should we. 73 00:07:07,490 --> 00:07:14,300 It's a difficult one, actually, and there are a number of answers. For one thing, Shakespeare is part of our culture, part of our heritage. 74 00:07:14,300 --> 00:07:21,410 He's important to us as thinkers in a way he's important to our Englishness is important to people who speak English. 75 00:07:21,410 --> 00:07:27,260 He has helped shape our language. We should understand him the way we should understand our histories for nothing. 76 00:07:27,260 --> 00:07:31,580 Shakespeare still helps us think about knotty issues. 77 00:07:31,580 --> 00:07:36,320 Shakespeare talks lyrically, sometimes with extraordinary beauty, 78 00:07:36,320 --> 00:07:44,900 so that you're captivated and sometimes angrily but always compellingly about philosophical issues we think about today. 79 00:07:44,900 --> 00:07:49,700 He talks about should one consider suicide? Should one consider murder? 80 00:07:49,700 --> 00:07:54,740 What is love? And he talks about the great questions that we all think about. 81 00:07:54,740 --> 00:08:01,190 And he doesn't give us answers, but he gives us extraordinary ways of thinking through those personal issues. 82 00:08:01,190 --> 00:08:08,540 So I think he has a personal meaning for everyone. And I think he's philosophically rich and his poetically, lyrically rich. 83 00:08:08,540 --> 00:08:18,710 And so for me, Shakespeare is maybe in verbal terms, perhaps what some very fine music is to you know, he's like Bach or something. 84 00:08:18,710 --> 00:08:22,370 You want to hear it again and again. You get different things out of it. 85 00:08:22,370 --> 00:08:25,640 So here's I think for all these reasons, important for me. 86 00:08:25,640 --> 00:08:31,430 But I do also think he's important for now. He doesn't actually really date. 87 00:08:31,430 --> 00:08:36,020 His language is dated, but his thought, his questions are permanent ones. 88 00:08:36,020 --> 00:08:44,610 And I think that's why people still like and put on productions and set them in Iraq or whatever, that these help us think through current issues. 89 00:08:44,610 --> 00:08:49,820 So you think that the universality of the questions is the reason stood the test? 90 00:08:49,820 --> 00:08:54,440 Yes, I think the universality of the questions, but also the way he posed them. 91 00:08:54,440 --> 00:09:04,430 I think it's that extraordinary mixture of philosophical depth and and poetically and linguistically rich and extraordinary language. 92 00:09:04,430 --> 00:09:07,100 I think, you know, his vocabulary was enormous. 93 00:09:07,100 --> 00:09:13,250 He created quite a lot of the language in which we talk and not only quite a lot of the language in which we talk, 94 00:09:13,250 --> 00:09:18,480 but he therefore created quite a lot of the ways in which we think Shakespeare, for instance, unlike us, 95 00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:23,060 most of us, we tend to think in fact, we do think within the vocabulary we have, 96 00:09:23,060 --> 00:09:32,420 we think in words that we know Shakespeare regularly thought beyond words and then created a word to captivate that thought that he had had. 97 00:09:32,420 --> 00:09:37,400 He therefore gave us a much richer and wider language in which to think. 98 00:09:37,400 --> 00:09:42,470 And and that's just one of the things he, incidentally, did. What an extraordinary man. 99 00:09:42,470 --> 00:09:49,400 And you know how lucky we are to be able to see him on stage and read him and think about him. 100 00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:55,590 It would be difficult to do what he did then to do so. It would be extraordinarily difficult. 101 00:09:55,590 --> 00:10:01,700 It was useful for him that he was around at a time when language was expanding and needed to expand. 102 00:10:01,700 --> 00:10:04,430 But nevertheless, he was a very extraordinary person. 103 00:10:04,430 --> 00:10:09,590 And I think it's pointless second guessing what he would be today, but I think today he would still be extraordinary. 104 00:10:09,590 --> 00:10:18,610 An amazing. So we're talking about your country. 105 00:10:18,610 --> 00:10:25,430 Yes, the. Yeah, so, yeah, how would you say that Elizabethan theatre is the. 106 00:10:25,430 --> 00:10:31,330 Today and how the experience to. The theatre was different. 107 00:10:31,330 --> 00:10:38,170 I mean, what's interesting is we're starting to build again the kinds of theatres we had in Shakespeare's time, 108 00:10:38,170 --> 00:10:44,670 the same movement that brought about the reconstructed Globe Theatre and is bringing back reconstructed Blackfriars. 109 00:10:44,670 --> 00:10:46,780 This is all this theatre. Shakespeare had. 110 00:10:46,780 --> 00:10:53,740 But that movement is also bringing back the kind of stage which they had, which is called a thrust stage, and it thrusts out into the audience. 111 00:10:53,740 --> 00:11:02,290 You've got audience all around it. And that's a much more dynamic theatre than the theatre we have had for the last three hundred or so years, 112 00:11:02,290 --> 00:11:10,030 which has been a proscenium theatre where you've got a sort of picture stage which is beautifully lit and you're away from it. 113 00:11:10,030 --> 00:11:14,560 You're outside it, looking at this amazing picture with acting going on and you're sitting in the dark 114 00:11:14,560 --> 00:11:18,040 and there's that lighted thing and you can see how that turns into television. 115 00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:22,250 That becomes the lighted screen in your room, but you don't interact with it. 116 00:11:22,250 --> 00:11:26,590 It's lovely. It's a gorgeous thing, but it doesn't really involve you. 117 00:11:26,590 --> 00:11:33,430 And I think what's exciting about Shakespeare's stage, but also any thrust stage we get back is that it's amongst you. 118 00:11:33,430 --> 00:11:35,170 It's happening in the middle of you. 119 00:11:35,170 --> 00:11:41,710 And if you're as well lit as the actors and they were in Shakespeare's time and again in some of these reconstructed theatres, 120 00:11:41,710 --> 00:11:46,540 then you can make eye contact with the actor and, you know, the actor is looking at to you. 121 00:11:46,540 --> 00:11:51,400 And when the actor chooses to address something to you, that's thrilling. 122 00:11:51,400 --> 00:11:56,030 That's extraordinary. And I love that kind of participatory side of theatre. 123 00:11:56,030 --> 00:12:00,490 So I think that's one thing that was true of Shakespeare's theatre and that we're getting back today. 124 00:12:00,490 --> 00:12:06,790 I think one of the differences, one of the things we haven't quite got back is to do with the atmosphere of the theatre. 125 00:12:06,790 --> 00:12:15,130 When you hear about audiences in Shakespeare's time, they would leave the theatre weeping, laughing, needing to have sex. 126 00:12:15,130 --> 00:12:20,710 They'd leave the theatre filled with emotions. And we're still a bit ritualistic about the theatre. 127 00:12:20,710 --> 00:12:28,390 Our theatre is very middle class. We might dress a bit nicely. We we clap whether we like it or not. 128 00:12:28,390 --> 00:12:32,620 We clap carefully at the end and then we fill out. And the theatre was not like that. 129 00:12:32,620 --> 00:12:40,540 It was vigorous. It was a bit crazy. It was cross-class and people vigorously loved it or hated it and hold fruit at it. 130 00:12:40,540 --> 00:12:45,460 And so I think the atmosphere was a bit more like a football game or something like that. 131 00:12:45,460 --> 00:12:51,370 People cared, they felt emotions. They were excited or upset by what the player, what the actors did. 132 00:12:51,370 --> 00:12:55,480 They were unruly, a bit ungovernable. And that's why your play had to be good. 133 00:12:55,480 --> 00:13:02,120 If your audience doesn't like your play, not only will they throw things at the actors, but they could start tearing the seats up and things. 134 00:13:02,120 --> 00:13:06,880 They were dreadful, those audiences, if they were annoyed. And we don't necessarily want to get that back. 135 00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:15,940 Exactly, but I would be thrilled to see a theatre that was a little crazier and a little less polite than the theatre we have now, 136 00:13:15,940 --> 00:13:21,670 because it seems that in every media report it is becoming more participatory. 137 00:13:21,670 --> 00:13:26,530 Yes, TV shows are just writing. Yes, writing and text. 138 00:13:26,530 --> 00:13:32,350 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Theatre seems to be the only one that's seen. 139 00:13:32,350 --> 00:13:38,470 It has got a bit left behind. It has, although there are some cities that are setting up tweet seats and things like that. 140 00:13:38,470 --> 00:13:44,260 But theatre has got a bit left behind, I think, because it has become so middle class. 141 00:13:44,260 --> 00:13:49,840 And I don't actually know when precisely that happened. And in England, it needn't be a financial thing. 142 00:13:49,840 --> 00:13:57,760 You can go to the theatre quite cheaply. You can go to the theatre for the same sum of money often so you can go to the cinema. 143 00:13:57,760 --> 00:14:05,770 So I don't quite know why theatre has become the preserve of a certain set of people, often middle class, often on the older side. 144 00:14:05,770 --> 00:14:14,560 And it needs to do something to win back youth and it needs somehow to tap into that aggression and vigour and thrilling, 145 00:14:14,560 --> 00:14:21,970 exciting this that that it that it used to have. And I'm not a director, so and I do go to the theatre. 146 00:14:21,970 --> 00:14:28,480 I love it, but I feel a bit sorry for theatre now. It's sort of dated in the way that other entertainments have. 147 00:14:28,480 --> 00:14:30,250 I don't quite know why that's happened. 148 00:14:30,250 --> 00:14:38,920 And I think amongst other things, maybe studying Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre could help people get back to what that amazing, 149 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:45,330 tightrope walking, thrilling, extraordinary theatrical event once was. 150 00:14:45,330 --> 00:14:51,900 You could go back and see which plane would you like to see? 151 00:14:51,900 --> 00:15:02,040 Oh, my, can I only go back once? I'd like to see all of them, you know, because I don't know whether I'd like to see one of the big ones. 152 00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:06,720 I mean, you've got to want to know what Hamlet what was the first performance of Hamlet like Lear. 153 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:11,190 But at the same time, someone who's interested in theatrical trickery. 154 00:15:11,190 --> 00:15:17,550 I'd like to see Jupiter coming down on the back of an eagle. They must have sort of dressed up somewhere like an eagle. 155 00:15:17,550 --> 00:15:24,000 You know, I'd like to see that. That's in simple and I'd like to see the disappearing banquet in The Tempest is a magic trick. 156 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:27,270 So I'd like to see those sort of theatrical details. 157 00:15:27,270 --> 00:15:33,210 But actually, maybe I'll stick with King Lear because it's so beautiful and moving and extraordinary play. 158 00:15:33,210 --> 00:15:41,730 And it's also got a bit that I'm just fascinated by. And this is a bit where Gloucester is told that he's climbing up a steep hill, but he isn't. 159 00:15:41,730 --> 00:15:46,470 He's blind, so he doesn't know. He's being told he's climbing up the steep hill and he can't really feel it. 160 00:15:46,470 --> 00:15:48,900 But he's blind and he's full of despair. 161 00:15:48,900 --> 00:15:55,440 And when he gets to what he thinks is the top of the cliffs of Dover, he jumps off it and he thinks he's committing suicide. 162 00:15:55,440 --> 00:15:59,850 But he was never climbing up the cliff and he doesn't jump off. Now, that is very moving. 163 00:15:59,850 --> 00:16:05,430 But how do you stage it on a flat stage where you see someone walking along and then they just do a little jump in the air? 164 00:16:05,430 --> 00:16:10,350 How is it horrifying rather than say funny or is it funny? 165 00:16:10,350 --> 00:16:16,950 I mean, what is it in the bleakest, most horrible way? Would you just laugh hysterically, that kind of thing? 166 00:16:16,950 --> 00:16:21,570 I'm very interested because it's to do with staging and it's also to do with interpretation. 167 00:16:21,570 --> 00:16:27,660 And I just love to know. And somehow you think. 168 00:16:27,660 --> 00:16:32,580 Something very valuable. Yes, I certainly do. 169 00:16:32,580 --> 00:16:38,040 We can always learn from the past, and it's not as though the past is better, if the past was better, we'd still be doing it. 170 00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:45,300 I think we can learn about the past from the past. I think we can learn new ways to think about the future from the past. 171 00:16:45,300 --> 00:16:49,230 I think we shouldn't lose our connexion with where we we came from. 172 00:16:49,230 --> 00:16:56,790 And I think the theatre in particular, because that was the age of the theatre and this is sort of the age of the film. 173 00:16:56,790 --> 00:17:02,010 So I think if we want to get back some of the figure and excitement of the theatre, 174 00:17:02,010 --> 00:17:09,060 I think we can get it back a little bit through understanding where it resided in the past and trying to recreate that. 175 00:17:09,060 --> 00:17:13,260 So I don't think we should go back in the past. I think the future should always be the future, 176 00:17:13,260 --> 00:17:17,760 but we should always learn from the best of what we've done and then apply it 177 00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:22,315 to now and see what amazing synergy comes from the mixture of now and then.