Bardwatching: Summer Term 2 2022-23

A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing underwent the ‘Love Island treatment’ in a new production from the National Youth Theatre. The tale of Claudio, Hero, Benedick and Beatrice was brought up to date by playwright Debris Stevenson, casting the drama in the superficial, image-obsessed world of reality TV. Audiences were invited to see behind the camera to see the puppets and puppeteers at work – with matchmaking, gossip and manipulation at the forefront of the drama.

There were reality TV plot devices aplenty, with soliloquies performed in the diary room, and Benedick and Beatrice’s first encounter framed as a boys vs girls ‘rap battle’. Stevenson uses the language of Shakespeare throughout, peppered with witty contemporary additions.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Former prime minister Boris Johnson might have been paid an £88,000 advance for a book on Shakespeare back in 2015, but it appears that this project remains on the back burner a little longer. He has since signed a new deal with a different publisher for a larger advance – about £510,000 – for his highly sought-after political memoirs.

Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius was initially commissioned to be released in 2016 to coincide with the 400^th anniversary of the Bard’s death, but the work was shelved when Johnson became foreign secretary under Theresa May.

What’s past is prologue

The Royal Shakespeare Company reopened its newly refurbished Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon this April with a new production based on Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Set to open this summer in the theatre is The Merchant of Venice 1936, which the RSC’s acting artistic director Erica Whyman says is ‘breathtakingly honest about the antisemitism described in Shakespeare’s play, and its new setting in 1930s Cable Street reveals a shameful slice of our history.’

The original Shakespearean play depicts Shylock as a greedy Jewish money lender, but this new adaptation presents the character as a widowed survivor of antisemitic pogroms in Russia.

By rule of knighthood, I distain and spurn

Mark Rylance has declared that, despite reservations about the honours system, he is proud of his knighthood because of the King’s love of Shakespeare. Rylance said in an interview for Times Radio that he remained troubled by the ‘military history’ of Britain and had spent time thinking about whether the knighthood he received in 2017.

King Charles was, Rylance said, ‘one of the most sincere, devout lovers of Shakespeare I’ve ever met in my life. I think his record proves him to be one of the most far-seeing and intelligent leaders in the world. So I’m very excited about him coming into a position of being King and that if being a knight is a support to him then I’m happy on that basis.’ King Charles is president of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a lifelong fan of the Bard.

The object of art is to give life a shape

Shakespeare’s Globe has revealed a new typeface for its celebration of the 400^th anniversary of the First Folio, designed from woodcut illustrations found within the Folio. The Globe collaborated with London-based type design studio Typeland. Because nature in its various forms sits at the heart of the Globe’s summer season this year, the new typeface addresses ‘ideas of flourishing and decay as well as cycles of regeneration and the restoration of balance,’ says Typeland co-founder Alessia Mazzarella. The new font features detailed illustrations of flowers, fruit, animals, musical instruments and Masonic symbols.

The fonts are used on the marketing materials for Shakespeare’s Globe’s summer 2023 season, which features productions of The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth and As You Like It.