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Does entertaining doubt about
Shakespeare's authorship change the way you approach Shakespeare as an actor?
Does it benefit you when you're looking at a Shakespearean part?
Yeah definitely. Now, how can I, what are good examples?
Well, obviously, one thing I have,
it's led me to read and study and inquire about the age of Shakespeare,
the period in which the plays were created with much more depth than I would have done,
than I was doing before I started to entertain doubt.
So, that's given me when I play a character in one of his plays.
Say I play Olivia in Twelfth Night.
I've read a lot about Mary Sidney and I can well imagine,
for instance, the fact that her beloved Philip Sidney,
when he dies, she's not allowed to or even if she is allowed to write a eulogy,
she has to begin it with about a paragraph of humbleness
and please forgive me for even having the chutzpah as a woman to write down anything.
And so the high level of suppression of feminine expression,
feminine freedom at that time,
that's important to know.
She lost her brother and her father in the same way just like Olivia.
And so I'm immediately thinking that the author may be inspired by knowing Mary Sidney.
Maybe Mary Sidney is involved in all the plays in all the places.
There is a quality of feminine observation
and writing about the feminine in the plays which I would argue is
also a little bit higher than the plays
around apart from the two Webster plays which is interesting.
One of them called the Duchess of Malfi with Mary Sidney went with her lover.
So that helps me to believe in Olivia as
a real person as well as a mythical character in a well-known play.
When I do Measure for Measure,
the Duke’s struggle with justice with the attempt of
a very liberal response to injustice and that not working and then turning to
a much more strict and almost fundamentalist or repressive response to injustice.
His uncertainty about which of these will be
right is so close to Francis Bacon's concerns.
And Francis Bacon is almost quoted in parallel form in the play at times by characters,
two or three occasions.
So, my awareness of Francis's feelings about justice and
mercy give me confidence when you come to, there are
wonderful open-ended things in the plays, aren’t
there and what is going on at the end of Measure for Measure?
Why is he so cruel?
As to allow Isabella to believe that her brother has been executed for this situation.
And you see that, so I come to feel what he's trying to do is explore the idea of
a public act of forgiveness as an alternative to
the idea that a public act of punishment like a beheading or a cutting off of a hand,
or a whipping or,
my God, quartering and torturing.
What about a public sincere act of forgiveness in the market square?
What effect would that have on people?
But he knows the Duke, as Francis knows,
to be truth, it has to be sincere, it can't be acted.
She has to genuinely believe that her brother has been wrongly executed by
this man and she has to genuinely forgive him in front of everyone.
If everyone learns afterwards,
oh she knew and she was just acting, that's nothing.
But if she genuinely does it,
so yes, it's cruel,
but the goal and
the possible good is less cruel than a public execution or a public torture.
And so the offer of his hand at the end is deeply
sincere because he bet everything on her
that she was that type of person who might do that and she came through and did it.
And yes, it's going to take a while which is going to be
really angry with them and there is
still issues of patriarchal control and stuff in it.
I am not sure I would have come to the same conclusion if I hadn't read so much about
Francis Bacon's concern with injustice and noticed the power parallelisms in the plays.
Again, I've never ever done a Shakespeare play with any intention of
trying to prove anything about the authorship
or wanting anyone to think about the authorship,
but I've always wanted to welcome
anyone whoever you think the author is to the play and hope
that I will get close to the author's intentions in my interpretation.
Not for the point of history but just feeling that probably,
the play will be at its most powerful,
its most resonant if I'm somehow close to
the author's intentions that if I'm putting a spin on it.
So for Horatio, if Fortinbras arrives and kills
Horatio and everyone else with a machine gun,
I think there's probably a chance, for my point of view,
there's a diminution of the power of the play,
the potential that the mind and the will.
The philosopher Horatio who has observed and learnt everything
and the man of action who can walk into a battle for
no particular cause without fear that they will talk with each other
and that a new king will arise who will have learnt from the mistakes of Hamlet.
That again, I think is I just would not having studied Francis's concern about
the Commonwealth and about society and
believing he is deeply involved in the play certainly after Oxford's death.
I couldn't be in a production where Fortinbras came in and killed everyone.
I'll tell you another way I think I've benefitted is I feel like the plays, in a way,
I think of the plays as being in a house or in some kind of there they are,
there's a kind of structure and you walk in through
the door of the authorship that you believe in.
So most people are introduced in
the school through the authorship of this humble Stratford Man,
just like you and me, no different.
So, you could write Shakespeare too,
and there's a lovely door you walk in there,
and then you don't get much further than the hallway because there isn't much else to go.
But if you go out of the house and you, as I, you get become aware of,
you look into a window and there's a study and there's all kinds of books and learning
and extraordinary ideas and then around in an Oxford,
you will look in through the Oxford thing and there's a back door,
there's a window, and there's all the connections with Hamlet.
The parallels between Hamlet's life and his life is enormous torment.
There's a whole collection of things he got in Italy
including Commedia masks and things he learnt in Italy and you go,
oh yes, fourteen plays set in Italy.
That's very interesting and then you walk in through
the Marlowe door and there's the ability to write,
and there's the support of people and an acknowledgment.
And there's a grammar school boy who is spotted early on and
encouraged like you would of any great artist or athlete or
warrior into the places where those people are trained.
And Mary Sidney, there's a whole another thing with Mary Sidney.
So, each time I've paid attention to a different authorship campaign
another window or a door has been made into the house.
Now, that house is made up of a number of different people now,
but each one gives me a different perspective.
So, I became aware that being attached too strongly to
one authorship candidate it was limiting, it was limiting.
It was empowering, particularly,
if you feel there's an injustice that has been done but it was limiting.
So, it's a bit like throwing a search engine through
the plays the authorship question, isn't it?
Each of these things I realize throws
a search question through the plays and brings out something different,
none of which is the fixed central truth of the plays,
but all of them are essential good qualities.
I don't find so. Come back to your question which was asked a couple of hours ago.
As far as my answers go,
I have not found anything negative in doubting The Stratford Man.
And if something came forward that proved to me basically,
if someone proved where he got his education,
and where he got his book learning
which he can't be born with though you can be born with genius.
I'd be delighted to reconnect with that story and I still do reconnect with it actually
because most people tell me about their ideas about The Stratford Man.
And I don't challenge them unless they want me to.
I'm quite interested to hear their ideas ‘cause I learned a lot about them.
Ros BarberDr
