Free Shakespeare: New and Expanded Edition by John Russell Brown

Free Shakespeare: New and Expanded Edition Reviews

• 
  Aaron Thomas

  I suppose this is an important text in its way, but it is based on a lot of fanciful thinking. Brown, for example, exhorts his readers to "remember that Shakespeare himself must have been constantly surprised at his plays in performance, as the exciting and complex words became part of the actors' performance on any particular day," but this is pure fantasy; any and every theatre person knows that this is true only theoretically but not practically. Sure, there are occasional surprises, but they're the exception not the rule. Such spontaneity and magic is perhaps possible if the company is doing forty plays in repertory, if it has been, say, a month or two since the last time the play has been done. Perhaps. But it seems to me that even in a performance by the King's Men, the spontaneity described by Brown here is a fantasy. Under the conditions under which the King's Men and other Jacobean companies labored, this seems nearly impossible.
  Now, I am all for some of the suggestions Brown makes in this book – they have been used to excellent effect by several companies – but to link his proposals to his fantasy version of theatre history seems to me specious.
  
  I want to make a larger argument about this somewhere, and it'll need teasing out, but I also found this whole thing really misogynist. It isn't just that Brown uses male pronouns throughout to refer to actors, directors, and designers – he imagines them all as men – but Brown also refers to the design of a Jacobean theatre building as "a man-sized theatre: infinite in faculties, in form and meaning, express and admirable, etc., etc.", and he finds himself (in 1996!) happily criticizing new interpretations of the plays that focus on feminism, sexual and gender politics, and race. Ok bro.
  
  For Brown, all of these new-fangled interpretations and readings get in the way of the true Shakespeare, the spontaneity and possibility that exist in the master's extraordinary texts. What he proposes, then, is that (male) actors, not directors, be given free rein to interpret these texts anew on any given night after testing out numerous possibilities and studying the myriad options that abound. All of this seems very interesting on paper – in fact, it seems like useful laboratory work – but I guess I just don't see how it makes good theatre.
• 
  Helen Mears

  A remarkable prescient book on both the performance and the study of Shakespeare. Written in the mid seventies, he suggests the use of active techniques to explore Shakespeare, avoiding meanings imposed by academics or directors.
• 
  Paul Sugarman

  Excellent book that offers a view of performance that is actor based and has probably been an inspiration for the many Actors Shakespeare Companies.