Making Sense?

I think there's some mystique about the history plays, or about Shakespeare in general, that "I'm not going to understand it. I'm not smart enough to understand it." I'd like to take a switch to all the people, all the teachers who told students "You can't understand this. This is over your head." It's not. It's just not. Shakespeare wrote for the groundling, common, everyday worker in England. It cost a penny to come see the show, and it was packed--every single day. Right across the street were the bars. People would finish the workday, go have their beer and come hear a play. And it's the same thing today. We really--of course, I'm subjective about this--but we really don't have an understandability problem at all with our audience. I think that's one good thing that is our hallmark is accessibility. We believe that if there is anything that you don't understand, and I mean anything--I mean a word--that you don't understand in the course of the play, that's our fault--not your fault. And we believe that if we can't make it clear, we'll cut it.

So I just want to start with, you know, that I don't think there's an understandability problem with Shakespeare. And then with histories, people think "Oh, if I don't know who all the kings and all the lords and all the everybodies are, I have a huge problem." The only possible problem I think that there is in that is that during this period of time it seems like everybody was called Richard, Edward, John, or Charles. So if you've seen a bunch of the history plays--and they're all the Duke of Gloucester, York, Wales or whatever--so actually if you've seen a lot of them you can, I think, you can start to say "Oh, is that Edward the Fourth or Fifth?" In an individual play you're only dealing with one group, so you only have one Richard in the play; you're not going to confuse him with Richard II. But for those who may feel that way, we do have character descriptions in the program, there's a genealogical chart that you can look at.

Jodie Marion I teach Composition at UCF while also studying for my Master's degree, which should be completed--hopefully--before the turn of the century. In the meantime I write for the Central Florida Hispanic (Education section) and especially dig reading Lawrence Durrell. Other Articles I've Written