“Shakespeare is meant to be preformed,” I tell my students. So is The Iliad for that matter, but that is another story. The point I make as I open another lecture on Hamlet is that Shakespeare didn’t write so you can skim Act III in your car before class. He didn’t even write so literature professors could scour every jot and tittle with all the tools of modern literary theory. Shakespeare is meant to be performed—to be embodied. It asks for an actor to bring herself to the role and speak the words—to give life to the text through her motions. When Hamlet wonders if he should continue to suffer those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it changes to see the anguish on his face. I know this.
Then I went to Shakespeare’s Globe, and I realized I was wrong. Not wrong in kind, but in degree. Shakespeare is meant to be performed, and the performance I saw in London was electric. I honestly did not expect it. There is probably some great German word that describes the difference between knowing through cognitive understanding and knowing by experience. It has many syllables and just saying it communicates what is meant. But I don’t know German, but I know what I experienced.
I paid five pounds to stand by the stage like the groundlings of old. The play, As You Like It, was not one I had read. I couldn’t even summarize the plot. But on a night threatening rain, I stood in the open-air theatre with tired feet and sore back wondering if this would be worth it. Uproarious may be too strong a word, but I laughed… a lot. I was at times confused, and my feet stayed tired and my back remained sore. But I was moved.
The phenomenon that is Shakespeare never made more sense to me than it did at that moment.
I realize that I am describing a moment of great privilege. Arranging a night out for some Shakespeare is not always an easy task to accomplish. Arranging that evening to take place in London, with world-class actors, in the open air of the Globe is doubly hard. I am sorry for this. I wish everyone could experience that night as I did. Even if I could arrange it I know many would not be interested in the experience. I understand. But perhaps if we could move the text from the lifeless pages of cheap paperbacks to the lived experience of the stage a few more people might be willing to try.
