A theatrical response to 1611

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s winter season contains an interesting combination of dramas. The majority of actors in their new production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure are also appearing in David Edgar’s new play, Written on the Heart.

Why did 1611 matter?

Written on the Heart makes vivid the tensions and undercurrents of those involved in producing a new version of the Bible – what we know today as the King James Version. For anyone studying Shakespeare or other drama of the era (and who at A Level does not?) it provides a dynamic context for the moral dilemmas of characters as diverse as Malvolio and Hamlet.

The playwright demonstrates why exactly which word selected to convey beliefs mattered so greatly – that the committee members really were dealing with matters of life and death, in an era where the ‘wrong’ beliefs were punished by the state.

Passionate protest lives on

• Think of the passion and commitment shown by those involved in the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 - people putting their lives on the line for what they believe in.
• The debate was just as meaningful 400 years ago in Britain, which had its own uprising just thirty years after the KJB was published.

In a telling contrast to modern Western ‘been there, done that’ ennui, people like William Tyndale went to the stake for daring to create a text that could be read by everyone, rather than just those in control. In the play he haunts the consciences of the translation committees four monarchs later. This stuff matters.

Belief in Measure for Measure

So why has the RSC chosen to stage Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’ alongside a debate about beliefs? In the video below, Measure for Measure's Director speaks about the overlap and how the knowledge gained by the cast for one production informs the other.

Measure for Measure is not a neat and tidy text to pigeonhole – dramas of ideas rarely are. With an ending open to interpretation, it presents the difference between espousing a doctrine and actually living by it, and the difficulties that creates. It asks what has the greater hold over people – sexual desire or moral beliefs.

Ways in to the text

Inevitably Shakespeare refers to the ethical debates of the day, with which he would have expected his audience to be familiar. However 21st century students do not necessarily inhabit the same moral universe. It helps therefore to have a guide to this complex play which clearly defines and explains the concepts and why they were important – Measure for Measure to the rescue!

As with the context of Written on the Heart, this stuff matters. Having the ‘wrong’ beliefs is punishable by the state. Though no longer the case in Britain, our news-screens show us what it is like to die for strongly held beliefs – and at the RSC drama set 400 years ago bring it vividly home.

The White Devil

New kid on the block

Shakespeare you always expect to see on A Level exam syllabuses.
Marlowe’s Dr Faustus continues to pull in the gothic crowd.
Now Webster’s dark revenge tragedy, The White Devil, is under examination.

Full of dark deeds and tortured imaginings, this complex plot hinges on a variety of characters and motifs typical of the revenge genre.

Rather than a hero, the play has a range of anti-heroes, each trying to outwit the other, until most of them are killed, by a variety of grisly means.

Often the female roles in plays of the era are used as receptacles of virtue – think Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or Isabella in Measure for Measure – to counterpoint male machinations. But Webster eschews this approach. Although one woman does provide a positive moral balance in the drama, there are two other feisty and amoral female roles, one of which is the ‘white devil’ of the title.

Moral ambiguity

But no-one is wholly good or bad, even though Webster tries to shape his contemporaries’ response to certain roles by overlaying them with a traditional Christian or evil iconography.

Modern audiences and students do not find that these visual or verbal references register so immediately, which is why the new Crossref-it.info guide aims to make everything clear, from what is happening in each scene, to the sophisticated allusions with which Webster peppers the text.

Don’t take our word for it

A senior British academic wrote of our White Devil Guide:

‘This guide introduces students to some of the contexts that will help them understand how The White Devil fits into the wider culture of Jacobean England. Its scene-by-scene glosses and questions are very well designed to support individual study, while the discussion of critical approaches and its suggestions for further reading, provide valuable pointers… . A thorough, very useful, learning
resource.’

Dr Pascale Aebischer (D.Phil., Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Dept. of English, University of
Exeter)

The influence of the KJB on culture

Not only were Webster and his contemporaries inspired by some of the ideas and stories
from the Bible – the world of music was shaped by it for centuries too.

Until 28th November, try and catch a performance of the Concert trio In Voice and Verse,
who tell the story of Genesis to Revelation using the words of the King James Bible
interspersed with the famous pieces of music which those words inspired.

The music will include excerpts from:

• Haydn's Creation
• Handel's Messiah
• Mendelssohn’s Oh for the Wings of a Dove
• Several modern compositions.

To discover performance venues and dates, click here.