The year 2002 has been busy and eventful for the Shakespearian theatre in England, with important and much-publicized productions in each of the Folio’s generic categories. Conveniently for a year in which Shakespeare Survey has focused on Shakespearian comedy, the overwhelming majority of these have been of comedies. Early in the year Mark Rylance’s Globe company performed Twelfth Night in the Hall at Middle Temple, in honour of the 400th anniversary of John Manningham’s seeing the same play there in 1602. Lucy Bailey’s joyous A Midsummer Night’s Dream played at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in the spring, while Greg Doran’s stylish but unsurprising Much Ado About Nothing was opening at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. In the early summer another detachment of the RSC performed a season of three late romances at the Roundhouse in London, including an appealing Pericles directed by Adrian Noble; and the autumn saw Sam Mendes’s valedictory Twelfth Night and Michael Grandage’s magisterial The Tempest sell out the Donmar in London and the Crucible in Sheffield respectively.

We are used to telling our students that the name of Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream comes from carpenters' quoins or coigns, 'wedge-shaped blocks used for building purposes', at the 'corners' of houses or walls, appropriate for the carpenter who appears in a 'marriage play' concerned with constructing 'houses' of another kind. But rarely is anything said of the quince itself, though it was part of a rich network of associations with marriage, sexuality, and fruitful 'issue' in the period, as well as of multi-lingual connections and metamorphic spellings that conflated it with coigns, quoyns, sexual corners or coining, and the cunnus or 'queynte' its sound suggests.

Minsheu's Guide unto the Tongues (1617) situates the English 'Quince' within this suggestive interlingual network:

In 1982 the actor Derek Jacobi was in Stratford-upon-Avon to play three roles – Prospero, Benedick and Peer Gynt – for the Royal Shakespeare Company. During that summer he had several abrasive encounters with academics, who criticized some of the line-readings he used as Benedick. One disliked his almost trademark habit of elongating selected vowel sounds and told him that this trait was more appropriate to a stand-up comic than a leading Shakespearian actor. Another regretted a moment in Benedick’s Act 2 soliloquy, as he absorbs the news that a love-lorn Beatrice is allegedly pining away for him. In modernized texts the words in question (Much Ado About Nothing 2.3, 212–13) characteristically read as follows: ‘Love me? Why, it must be requited’. Which Jacobi had the temerity to convert into: ‘Love me! Why? It must be requited’. So the disagreement hinged on whether a single three-letter word, ‘why’, should here be regarded as an interjection-cum-exclamation or an interrogative – an issue less trivial than might at first appear, since contrary judgements about it can generate radically different performances of the soliloquy.

This cartoon (illustration 15) appeared in the London Evening Standard on 16 March 2001. It is, I suppose, instantly recognizable as a reference to Hamlet: we know this from the man's costume, the fact that he is holding a skull, and the caption, which is clearly a parody of 'To be or not to be' (Hamlet 3.1.56). If someone were to come across this cartoon in the archives of the Evening Standard in say fifty or one hundred years' time, it would still be obvious that it is a reference to Hamlet.

What would by then need annotation is the immediate context of the cartoon: one would need to explain that the figure represents Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time, and that the cartoon was published during a period when there was widespread speculation that he would call a General Election on 3 May. One would need to explain further that the object he is holding is the skull of a sheep and that the reason why he was being indecisive about the date was the epidemic of foot and mouth disease which was sweeping the country during the Spring of 2001: apart from the extent to which the election might have been seen as an unnecessary distraction at a time of national crisis, there was the practical consideration that the movements of both politicians and voters would be restricted. On the other hand, postponing the election would send a negative message to potential business investors and tourists.

We can all see ourselves in Shakespeare. But if you were the Prince of Wales you’d be bound to take a particular interest in Hal – and therefore in Falstaff. Imagine therefore that you’re Albert Edward Prince of Wales, familiarly known as Bertie, that you’re eleven years old, that it’s the Christmas holidays of 1852, that Charles Kean and his troupe are giving a command performance of Henry IV, Part I at Windsor Castle for your mum and the rest of the family. And that Falstaff makes you laugh. Many years later the actor playing Prince Hal will recall your reaction to ‘the scene where Falstaff boasts of his bravery with his shield and buckler’. Like this:

What exactly is the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and their political significance? It is clear that large political issues determine the form and content of the plays he wrote, even if their political focus and direction often appear enigmatic to commentators. It surely cannot be a coincidence that Shakespeare’s history plays, all of which date from the 1590s (except the late collaboration Henry VIII), deal extensively and obsessively with the question of the monarch’s legitimacy and the problem of the succession. These were the issues that dominated political discussions and literary representations of Elizabeth, who actively forbade her subjects to talk openly about her – and their – future. After 1603, Shakespeare produced a number of plays that deal with the matter of Britain – King Lear, Macbeth and Cymbeline – suggesting that his use of history had altered along with the new issues raised by James’s reign. James’s accession undoubtedly transformed the political agenda: certain approaches and burning issues were put to one side or disappeared altogether, and others came to the fore and assumed a vital new importance.

When Harold Bloom talks, people listen. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom gave his imprimatur to one series ('I recommend the Arden Shakespeare') while dismissing another edition out of hand ('I have avoided the New Oxford Shakespeare'). Although Bloom's ex cathedra pronouncements have occasioned some spirited responses, I'm not particularly anxious about their influence - save that my review of this year's additions to the Arden and Oxford series coincidentally confirms Bloom's prejudices: whereas I can highly recommend the new Arden 3 editions of 1 Henry IV and Richard II, I would advise serious students to approach with caution the new Oxford edition of the poems.

The Oxford Complete Sonnets and Poems, edited by Colin Burrow, is one of the most error-riddled critical editions of Shakespeare in recent memory. All told, there are twenty-six substantive errors in the text, including several that could significantly affect interpretation: for 'breathes' read 'breeds' (Venus 742), for 'reweaves' read 'unweaves' (Venus 991; a mistake that not only weakens the Penelope allusion but invents a word, reweaves, that does not appear in the Shakespeare canon), for 'sweet' read 'swift' (Venus 1190), for 'will' read 'ill' (Lucrece 91; the slip is exacerbated by a substantial commentary note on will), for 'wretch' read 'wench' (Lucrece 1273), for 'ringing' read 'hanging' (Lucrece 1493). I should make it clear that these are not intentional emendations, but unintended errors that often render the lines in question nonsensical.

That was the unmistakably Northern-voiced soundbite Barrie Rutter gave the London critic who travelled to Yorkshire in June 1992 to preview the inaugural production of his new company, Northern Broadsides, named, pointedly, to deliver what it promised in performance: 'verbal attack'. Voices like Rutter's have never been cast as Shakespeare's royals, at least not at the Royal Shakespeare and National Theatres; hence his audacious (some said barmy) decision to declare theatrical UDI, to set up a company where he and his working-class Northern accent would be entitled to play the hunchback king. As things turned out, however, when it came to the performance, Rutter's Richard sounded different even before he opened his mouth. It was his footfall that produced the play's original bizarre acoustic, an uneven, slurred silence broken by a percussive clomp as he limped the full length of his impromptu stage, a concrete-floored boatshed on Hull marina. On his good foot Rutter was wearing a shoe; on the gammy twisted one, the sort of wooden clog every spinner or weaver in the north of England wore in the mills a couple generations back and fishworkers on Hull docks, Rutter's father among them, still did in the 1960s - the sort of clog that functioned not just as industrial footwear but class apparatus and cultural marker.

The final version of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is arrived at only after a series of last minute, rather frenetic changes. At the first meeting of the tradesmen in the city, their play is apparently complete; parts are assigned, and each player given his lines to learn for the rehearsal next night in the forest. However, by the time the play is performed half of the original six parts, Thisbe’s mother and father, and Pyramus’s father (see 1.2.56-9), have disappeared without trace. When the ‘company’ meet in the forest, in the discussion before rehearsal begins, two new parts, ‘Wall’ and ‘Moonshine’, are added; a prologue, to be spoken by Pyramus telling the audience he ‘is not killed indeed’ (3.1.18), promised but never written; and curiously, the scene they rehearse never performed. At one level, this makes sense, but it also adds to the impression that the emergence of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ is somewhat chaotic. And in the middle of all this, either directly suggesting changes himself or responding to suggestions by members of the ‘company’, is A Midsummer Night’s Dream ’s other playwright, Peter Quince the carpenter. As his play undergoes deletion and revision which will mean his adding fifty-three new lines to the final script, itself only 133 lines in total, he is remarkable for his genial tolerance and enthusiasm.

For two decades now Shakespeare scholars have been busy exposing the use of this writer in the legitimation of various oppressive regimes - sexual, imperialist, racial, class, and so on. To put it crudely: as World's Most Canonical Author, Shakespeare has become synonymous with the Establishment. Not a few Shakespeare critics would now agree with William Hazlitt that Shakespeare 'had a leaning to the arbitrary [i.e. anti-democratic] side of the question' - or, perhaps, would ruefully second Walt Whitman's accusation that, his 'dramas' being 'the superbest poetic culmination-expression of feudalism', Shakespeare had nothing to offer democracies.

George Orwell once said some authors were 'worth stealing', a truth demonstrated by both left and right attempting to claim them as their own. But many left-wing Shakespearians now concur with their ideological opponents that this writer naturally - or, at least, regularly - suits a conservative agenda.

Twenty lines in to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when ‘merriments’, ‘mirth’ and ‘pomp’ have been ordered up to close off and reconcile with sportive ‘triumph’ the memory of the ‘injuries’ inflicted in the pre-history of the play by ‘triumph’ of a martial kind, Egeus comes crashing in upon Theseus’s pre-marital tête-à-tête, fuming, spluttering, ‘Full of vexation . . . with complaint / Against my child, my daughter Hermia’ (1.1.22–3). Stubborn Hermia has dug her heels in, is refusing to marry her father’s choice. She has eyes only for Lysander. Retaliating, the child-changed father demands ‘the ancient privilege of Athens’, to ‘dispose’ of what is ‘mine’ ‘either to this gentleman’ (Demetrius) ‘Or to her death, according to our law’ (41–4). ‘What say you, Hermia?’ asks Theseus (46). She answers: ‘I would my father look’d but with my eyes’ (56). But Theseus counters: ‘Rather your eyes must with his judgment look’ (57). That exchange, in a nutshell, formulates the impasse this most optically challenged (and challenging) Shakespeare play is going to explore, setting up a contest of looking strategies that the Dream is never to reconcile, only, finally, to finesse.

Declan Donnellan is joint Artistic Director of Cheek by Jowl. He was born in England of Irish parents in 1953, read English and Law at Queens’ College, Cambridge and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1978. With designer Nick Ormerod, he formed Cheek By Jowl in 1981; the group has since been described by Time magazine as ‘one of the ten great theatre companies in the world’. For Cheek by Jowl he has directed nine Shakespeare productions, including an all-male As You Like It (1991; revived 1994), Measure for Measure (1994), Much Ado About Nothing (1998), and, in collaboration with the Maly Theatre, St Petersburg, The Winter’s Tale (1999). He has won several awards in Paris, Moscow, New York and London including the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in 1991. His first book The Actor and the Target was published in 2002. He directed the inaugural production of King Lear for the RSC Academy in 2002.

Most of the productions listed are by professional companies, but some amateur productions are included. The information is taken from Touchstone (http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk), a Shakespeare website maintained by the Shakespeare Institute Library. Touchstone includes a monthly list of current and forthcoming UK Shakespeare productions from listings information. The Traffic of the Stage database, also available on Touchstone, archives UK Shakespeare production information since January 1999, correlating information from listings with reviews held in the Shakespeare Institute Library. The websites provided for theatre companies were accurate at the time of going to press.

All’s Well that Ends Well

Stamford Shakespeare Company. Tolethorpe Hall, Stamford: 1 June – 28 July

http://www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk

Amateur Shakespeare production.

As You Like It

Royal Shakespeare Company. The Pit, London: 2 January – 7 February 2001. http://www.rsc.org.uk

Transfer from Royal Shakespeare Theatre: March 2000

Director: Gregory Doran

Designer: Kaffe Fassett, Niki Turner

Rosalind: Alexandra Gilbreath

British Touring Shakespeare Company. Open-air touring production: 23 June – 3 August 2001.

http://www.btsc.homestead.com

Director: Miles Gregory

Creation Theatre Company and Oxford Stage Company. Magdalen College School Grounds, Oxford: 16 July – 1 September 2001. Open-air production. http://www.creationtheatre.co.uk

Director: Charlotte Conquest

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sir Henry Wotton complains that women never let go of their old love affairs. At a recent dinner-party he was dismayed when one of his ex-lovers tried to drag out a romance that he had wisely buried in a bed of asphodel. Although she insisted he had spoiled her life, Wotton observed that she ate an enormous dinner, so he did not feel any anxiety. ‘But women never know when the curtain has fallen’, he declares.

As usual in Wilde, this criticism against women is really a compliment in disguise – for no one could be more addicted to sixth acts than the charmingly artificial Oscar. De Profundis is one of the longest postscripts ever written to a played-out love affair, and it makes a devastating tragic ending to what should have been a bedroom farce. Similarly, Wilde’s story ‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’ adds a sixth act to Shakespeare’s love-life, outing the Bard after the curtain has fallen on his sexuality. Like Dorian Gray, ‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’ is a story about three men and a picture, in which one friend after another falls for the contagious theory that the Sonnets were dedicated to one Willie Hughes, supposedly a fetching boy-actor at the Globe.

The document known to us as John Shakespeare’s ‘Spiritual Testament’, allegedly discovered during repairs in the 1750s to the roof of the house in which he once lived, is perhaps the greatest weapon in the arsenal of those who maintain that Shakespeare’s father remained a practising Catholic; and, if he did, that his son must at least have been reared in the Catholic faith. Moreover, it has been claimed, John’s subscription to this ‘testament’ can be dated to 1580 or 1581, the years of the Jesuit mission into England, led by Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons, thus bringing the Shakespeare family, during William’s formative years, into close contact with dangerous Catholic conspirators. However, there are difficulties to overcome if we are to accept the document’s authenticity, let alone its Jesuit associations; and even if we could, this would not establish that Shakespeare remained loyal to the Catholic church in later years. Be that as it may, it is the purpose of this essay to subject the ‘Spiritual Testament’ to close critical examination in an effort to determine whether it can indeed be safely used in the debate over Shakespeare’s religious beliefs.

Becoming a contributor to this section of Shakespeare Survey after years of being an appreciative user of it has only increased my admiration passing admiration for the fair-minded comprehensiveness and steady Sitzfleisch of my predecessors. Like them, no doubt, I have remarked - as the books piled higher - which presses are most efficient at ensuring attention for their books, and how much more alert are North American and British publishers (than publishers elsewhere) to the utility of a notice in these pages, because so much of the world conversation in Shakespeare studies is tacitly a function of those books and periodicals, those conferences, lecture-circuits, and concerns. Let me continue with some observations on the material conditions of publication.

Increasing numbers of university presses are now reluctant to publish first books based on doctoral dissertations, or monographs which do not address central (read 'popular with university teachers for their courses') subjects. The pressure which this puts on scholars to write about Shakespeare or to attach whatever they are writing to Shakespeare, need not be emphasized; there is a self-fulfilling prophecy here, in which 'hegemonic Shakespeare' becomes indirectly a product of refusal - above all the reluctance of individual readers, and then libraries, to buy books, so that publishers then decline to print and booksellers to stock them any more.

‘From Grecia in olde time did almost all famous things come. [The Greeks] were the authors of ciuilitie vnto the Westerne nations’, George Abbot, author of A Brief Description of the Whole World, asserts in 1599. Athens, in particular, Peter Heylyn concurs, some two decades later, ‘was a famous Vniuersitie, from whose great cisterne, the conduit pipes of learning were dispersed over all Europe’ (209–10). And Roger Ascham maintains that ‘in that one Citie, in memorie of one aige, were mo learned men [. . .] than all tyme doth remember, than all place doth affourde, than all other tonges do conteine’. The contrast, however, between such glories of the past and a far from glorious present could not be more striking. As Heylyn observes:

It seems most fitting that the one play in the Shakespearian Folio which carries Athens in its title should hinge upon a similar lapse from civility into barbarism, from metropolitan plenitude in ‘all famous things’ to a wilderness where cave-dwelling and digging for roots are the order of the day. In Shakespeare’s lifetime Athens itself had all but disappeared from Western consciousness.