Shakespeare and London

Brief Review: Twelfth Night, Wyndhams Theatre, London.

Derek Jacobi as Malvolio is plastered all over the Tube, inviting all Londoners to this show. And it is a good one, and Jacobi is one of the standouts, as is whoever acts as Olivia. The taut sexual tension of the play is drawn out excellently. The Duke is even shirtless, which was a bit much for me but it worked. The movements of the actors were physical and drew the audience in to the action. The production was fairly simple, and the bit of effects and music were not severely overdone...

This takes us to the second part of my post, which concerns the recent talk (as in, ended half an hour ago) at UCL by the notable Shakespeare scholar John Russell Brown (he edited my version of Merchant of Venice), concerning how Shakespeare is received all over the world.

The first notable thing, of course, is that Shakespeare is played all over the world, and usually in the local languages of the people. In India it is played in Hindi, not English. And according to Brown, Shakespeare is not lost in translation. How can this be, if Shakespeare is all poetry, a product of Elizabethean language, culture and society, and bound only to that context? How does he speak meaningfully to people in Delhi, Seoul, Munich, Shanghai, etc?

Brown things it has something to do with Shakespeare's magnificent direction of movement and plot. Even if you don't understand the actor's words, you can feel their transformation into Shakespeare's well crafted characters. You can still, in Brown's words "share the sensation of being of perons in play." Shakespeare can take us into lives and situations we would not otherwise have the experience of. Words do not possess knowledge and experience, but Shakespeare's plays seem capable of occasioning them regardless of the specific words used. The essence of Shakespeare translates into all cultures and across time.

What does this tell us?