You're Dead to Me - Shakespeare (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

In this episode, recorded live at the Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Farah Karim-Cooper and comedian Richard Herring to learn all about the life, legend and legacy of William Shakespeare himself. 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, which preserved his work for future generations. But how did a boy from the Midlands become the most famous playwright in the English-speaking world, and how did the publication of the folio contribute to his legacy? This episode explores Shakespeare’s life, career and dramatic works, as well as the reception of his plays in the centuries after his death, and the creation of his legend in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Research by: Jon Mason Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Caitlin Hobbs Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Chris Ledgard

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm delighted that today we're recording live

from the beautiful Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescott, which means I get to say, hello, sorry, no, hail, fair audience, well met. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Well met. What a lovely sound. Right, today we are donning our ruffs, pulling on our tights and travelling back to early modern England to learn all about the life and legend of Mr William Shakespeare,

the Bard himself. And to help craft this merry narrative, we have two very special guests, co-stars in fact. In History Corner, she's Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College London, Director of Education and Research at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and was recently President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She's also the author of a fascinating new book, The Great White Bard, Shakespeare, Race and the Future.

It's Professor Farah Karim Cooper. Welcome, Farah. Hi. And in Comedy Corner, we have a fellow who is wise enough to play the fool. His CV is vast. He's a comedian, author, playwright, blogger, podcast royalty. You'll know him as a Taskmaster Champion from the brilliantly funny Richard Herring, Leicester Square Theatre podcast,

which gives away who he is. It's also got a spin-off show about books, which I love very much. And of course, he was on our classic episode of You're Dead to Me about Stonehenge. It's none other than Richard Herring. Welcome back, Richard. Thank you. about Stonehenge, it's none other than Richard Herring.

Welcome back, Richard. APPLAUSE Thank you. I didn't get the leather jacket memo, so... Sorry. Yeah, they're actually in reception. Yeah, OK. Richard, hello. Hello, it's good to be here. Yeah, it's good in reception. Yeah, OK. Richard, hello. Hello, it's good to be here. Yeah, it's good to have you back.

Thank you. Last time on, you were talking about cats building Stonehenge. That's right, yeah. It was quite weird. They also wrote all the plays when this goes on. Not infinite monkeys, but infinite cats. Richard, you mask it well with your silliness, but you studied history at Oxford.

I mean, I'd say studied was an over... You attended Oxford University. I did a lot of comedy. I did a lot of drama, so I probably did some Shakespeare at university. Do you know your Shakespeare? A little bit. Luckily, I'm not the expert here. No, we wouldn't have done that.

That would be an absolute booking disaster. I know more about Shakespeare than I do about Stonehenge. OK, well, in fairness, you knew nothing about Stonehenge. That's good. And you're a playwright as well. You have written multiple plays. So have you ever cheekily taken inspiration from the Bard or just lifted stuff entirely, because that's allowed?

No, well, I've done some sketches about him. I deconstructed the to-be-or-not-to-be speech, but I can't remember what I did. I can pretty much remember most of that speech, but I won't try. I probably won't do the best ever version of it if I try it in this room. Where do you stand on the debate?

I think to be or not to be, first of all, that's the first and only question on the University of Beekeeping entrance exam. And... The answer's to be, if you want to get in. But also, to be, that's where I go on the to be or not to be. That's what I read. To be or not to be? To be. So, what do you know? All right, well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast.

This is called the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, and indeed, lovely audience, might know about today's subject. Audience, give me a cheer if you've seen a Shakespeare play. Hooray! Got away with that one, didn't we? Yes, he's probably the world's most famous playwright. His legacy is absolutely everywhere. You can find it in theatre, ballet, opera, TV, songs,

hip hop, memes, iconic movies. You may know bits of his life from watching Upstart Crow on the BBC, the sitcom. You may have seen Shakespeare in Love, that great movie. You may have read Maggie O'Farrell's heartbreaking novel Hamnet. But what do we really need to know about this great man? And how did an ordinary boy from the Midlands go global? Let's find out. Where was little William born and what was his family situation? OK, well, we know he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was baptised on the 26th of April in 1564. We celebrate his birthday on the 23rd because obviously it was tradition back then to baptize somebody within three days of their birth. But he may not have been born on the 23rd of April. He could have been born on the 24th of April or the 25th of April.

But it's also St. George's Day. So it's a great way to celebrate England as well as to celebrate Shakespeare. But it's also St. George's Day. So it's a great way to celebrate England as well as to celebrate Shakespeare. He was the eldest of six surviving children to John Shakespeare and to Mary Arden. And John Shakespeare was, you know, he was a fortune hunter a little bit himself. And he was quite active in civic duty. He was a bailiff.

He was a constable. Most famously, he was a glove maker, which Shakespeare kind of makes much of, I think, throughout his works. But he was also Stratford's ale taster, which is kind of interesting. Now, it's a much more prestigious role than you think it is. It's a good job. Yeah, it's a really good job.

But he's checking the worth of loaves of bread as well as whether or not the ale is wholesome. So I think it was a pretty prestigious thing to be doing. How do you get that job? What are the qualifications? That's an ale. Yes. I mean, taste buds, you need to have some taste buds. But he was fined for not showing up in the court records a couple of times. So he wasn't always the most toward human. Richard, he wasn't just fin fine for missing three sittings at the court. He was fined also in 1552, John Shakespeare, for piling up stercuinium next to his front door. What was stercuinium? On his front door? Yeah. I mean, you're asking me, so it's probably stone based, but... That's your default answer for everything, isn't it? That's what I would do.

Is it some kind of poop? Oh, it is some kind of poop. Yes, stucconium's a Latin name for a manure. It was a pile of animal dung, presumably because he's a glove maker, and that's used in the softening of the leather, I think. But he's piling it by his front door, which was not permitted. But that does sort of tell us a little bit about William Shakespeare.

He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born with poo on his shoe. He's his dad's middle class, but his dad is sort of having to bounce between jobs a bit. And he goes to school, Shakespeare. He goes to a grammar school, the King's New School in Stratford-upon-Avon. Professor Farrow, what's our... We don't know exactly what's in the curriculum,

but what's our informed guess? No, we don't know exactly, but we do know that there was a lot of classical texts. So he would have read Ovid, he would have read Seneca, and he did rip off both of them. And he probably would have come across Cicero and Virgil, so all the great classical writers. And they had to memorise it, which is good for an acting career, career in the future. He survived school, and in 15, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. No, not that one.

She's 26. How old do you think he is? What year was it? I can... 1582. Are you going to work backwards? No, I can't. I can't remember when he was born.

I'm going to say he was 15. Oh, that's quite good. He was 18. Oh, wow. He was 18. Older woman. Older woman. Shotgun wedding.

Right. Because six months later, baby appears. Yeah yeah so he's clearly gone oh okay okay let's uh let's let's make this one official how are you picturing the relationship she's 26 and he's 18 posh and becks is what i'm thinking about this i think i think uh he's the one with the natural talent and she swoops in and is acting like a mum towards him a little bit that's i've just been watching the david beckham documentary it's good though she claims she's working class but her dad drove her to school in a roller coaster i mean i think rich's guess is as good as we know because we don't really know much about their relationship we don't you're right in that Susanna was born six months later after they got married, and then they had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Unfortunately, Hamnet didn't

survive past 11, and we think he may have died of the plague. That's what the novel Hamnet is about. There are no surviving love letters. There may be a sonnet where she's referenced a few times, but it's really unclear how they felt about each other. And of course, he spent most of his time away. You talked about that seven years gap where of course, he spent most of his time away. You talked about that seven years gap where we don't have any records of Shakespeare's life. And so you can imagine the amount of speculation about his life in that period. Some people think he may have traveled to Italy,

which is why he set so many plays there. But then he surfaces magically in 1592. So in the 1590s, Shakespeare, he's in London. He's making a name for himself as an actor. But instead of boozing with Marlowe and Johnson, he's safely indoors, scribbling by candlelight. Hashtag self-care. Hashtag writer life. Shakespeare was cranking out two plays per year. Right.

How many plays did Shakespeare write in his career? Oh, I mean, it's a lot, because he didn't write for very long. If we're talking about, if you're saying he started in 1492. 1592. 1592, I mean, yes. Well, he would have had92 1592 i mean yes well if it's put we'd had 100 extra years if i was him in columbus it was yeah so well if it's two a year uh 32 plus uh 16 48 please oh that's quite a good guess it's not bad i mean it's wrong but like um Yes, it's not bad.

I mean, it's wrong, but... Farrah, what's our safe number? And then what's the debatable number? So, safe number is, like, 37. But a lot of scholars have put forward other plays that have been either called anonymous or written by other people that have now been attributed to Shakespeare. So some people have it as high as 42.

But I'm on the 37 side of things. Oh, are you? Yeah. Is it possible that something else would turn up? Something could turn up somewhere. I just want people to keep looking. Keep looking. Yeah.

Yeah. To the benefit of radio listeners, Richard is currently looking under the table. I think they got that. I think they don't need to be pandered to as people who make them. I mean, there were fake Spears. There were fake plays written supposedly by Shakespeare in the 18th century. Yeah, there was a lot of what they call apocrypha-type plays.

What is he writing, then? We have it traditionally split into comedies, tragedies and histories. Does he do that himself, or is that how we...? No, that's how the folio is described, yeah. And actually, since then, scholars have described, tragedies, and histories. Does he do that himself, or is that how we... No, that's how the folio is described, yeah. And actually, since then, scholars have described, you know, some of them as tragic comedies or romances, so we kind of play with genre a little bit. I call them comedies.

Comedy. Yeah, you've got to do the air quotes on the radio. So cool. I think the people on the radio got that. They got it. They're a learned crowd. But he was inspired. In the 1590s, histories were really popular

so he wrote quite a few histories. There were lots of other history plays being performed. He was inspired by all sorts of things. So he obviously found sources for a lot of his work. But there could be contemporary events. You know, there was The Plague, which then shows up in different ways in some of his plays, like Romeo and Juliet. I was stunned to discover Hamlet.

He didn't create Hamlet. There was a Hamlet already. Well, he did. He just did a Hamlet. He did. Well, kind of, kind of. I mean, it's a revenge tragedy that potentially draws on the Spanish tragedy by Thomas Kidd, but then some people think there's this Ur-Hamlet

or original Hamlet or pre-Hamlet that existed and that Shakespeare may have lifted from that. It's a Hamlet, Shamlet. He's a fraud. He's a hack, Richard. What other sources have we got? Because you said history plays. What history is he reading to write his history play you know he's not on wikipedia so what's he reading yeah so he i mean hamlet comes

from a danish history called saxo grammaticus and uh he read holland sheds chronicles of england got learned in ireland that's where yeah classic that's where he got his histories and also a play i won't mention theater um and uh yeah. And, yeah, so that was, I mean, and he read classical sources like Plutarch, where he got Antony Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. So we think of him then as someone who's building off other stuff. He's borrowing, he's reinterpreting, he's adding his own twist. It's all very interesting.

But he's not the lone genius, Richard. I mean, you know, in comedy, right, co-writing is very common. Lots of stand-ups have writers. Yes, they do. You were in a sketch group in a TV show, you were co-writing with your comedy partner at the time. Collaborating is normal, right, in comedy? Yeah, I suppose so.

I think even if you do a play, obviously, and especially comedy, if you're not listening to what the actors are saying and the actors are feeling, you want your actors to know the characters better than you, really. So they've got to dig in and go, well, I don't think my character would say this. And then you have to go, yes, they bloody would.

Or just say the lines. What's my motivation? The motivation is say it. Absolutely. No bitterness there there we can see it but you know you listen and definitely with jokes you know

you will find that things build in the rehearsal room for sure and that's a really lovely point it's actually a crucial point actually because that's lived experience

and I think scholars well maybe not recently but certainly now we don't say Shakespeare is the lone genius who single handedly sat in his room banging out 37 plays, plus five maybe, but he's collaborating. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a later construction, a really romantic notion about Shakespeare writing in an attic in Stratford, that actually he was getting kind of messy

writing in Southwark. But as you say the the way which the rest of the kind of theater making apparatus contributes to the making of the play is something that we we shouldn't lose sight of yeah and Shakespeare you know we're getting a sense of him performing in London acting in London writing in London but he's got a wife and kids back home so he's away for weeks and months he's traveling back to see his family it's sort of the life of a touring comedian, a bit wretched. This is hard graft. Yeah, I mean, I think he sounds like he's away.

I mean, I guess the trains weren't as good in those days. They were probably better, actually. Maybe better. The horse and cart might have been the fastest. But yeah, that's difficult. But it sounds like maybe he didn't mind that so much once he's left. I mean, what happens on tour stays on tour. That is the mantra,

so maybe he was happy to be away on tour permanently. Maybe, yeah. But we have to think of him, I think, as a man from Stratford, but a man working in London primarily. And he's working incredibly hard, so the question I suppose we can ask is, is he successful? Is he a star? You know, is he selling out? Everyone wants to come see him. He was successful, I would say. And his theatre company was successful. But he wasn't the colossus that he is today. You know, we've constructed a much bigger Shakespeare than perhaps was around in his own time.

Shakespeare than perhaps was around in his own time. Plays would have sold out, no doubt, but then Christopher Marlowe might have sold out plays at the Rose. In fact, they kept coming back to the Rose, which meant that Marlowe was popular too. And so was Webster, so was Middleton. Middleton was the one who sold, completely sold out, 3,000 people in the globe to watch A Game at Chess, which was his most popular play. So if he's selling out playhouses, does that mean Shakespeare's giving the public what they crave? Or is he writing plays that are challenging and pushing against the taste of the time or the prejudices of the time? Is he trying to change people's minds or is he actually going, what you all want, sex and violence?

All of it. I think all of it. I think what's really clever about Shakespeare is that he's working, sometimes he works some of these things in by stealth. And he doesn't give the audience answers. He's always giving them more questions, more ideas and conflicts and dilemmas to be thinking about. So he doesn't always give them what they want, but he makes them think he's giving them what they want. Yeah. That's how I like to think of it.

Yeah. Cause there are, there are themes in Shakespeare that are laudable. Yeah. And there are those that we go. Yeah. So then, you know, you'll have these troubling moments. You have bits of, you know, you find racism in his plays, anti-Semitism, but also then you see these incredible pleas for justice and for equality that emerge in different plays. And then you've got extraordinary female characters who seem to be incredibly powerful. But at the same time, women are oppressed in a lot of his plays. So it's complex. And he's writing about foreigners, strangers.

This is London, but he's writing about Verona and Greece and various parts of Europe. He doesn't set any of his plays in London. He sets them afar. But he is very conscious of the multicultural and multi-ethnic character of London. It was an incredibly diverse city. We tend not to think of it that way because period dramas don't really depict that. But it was that there were people living in London from all over. There were black people living in London at

the time. And Shakespeare was aware of this. And you can feel that kind of diverse immediacy in his work. Richard, Shakespeare was living through a time of great political turbulence. So do you think in your deep knowledge of Shakespeare, do you think he's a bit of a provocateur or do you think he's playing it safe when he was writing? I feel like only from films I've watched that he's quite a suck-up to royalty and everything. So whoever's in charge, I don't think he's very revolutionary in that sense,

but maybe I'm wrong. That's interesting. Do you want to defend his honour? I mean, we don't really have any record of him being hauled in front of the Privy Council. but maybe I'm wrong. That's interesting. Do you want to defend his honour? I mean, we don't really have any record of him being hauled in front of the Privy Council. In fact, the opposite happens. He becomes patroned, his company is patroned by King James.

And that's when they become the Kingsmen. Yes, not the Colin Firth movie, sadly. James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England, 1603. That's a moment of tension because the end of the Tudor dynasty in comes a foreign king. Scotland's a different country. But he gets to be renamed.

The King's Men is the new troop, which is rather glamorous. They get a lovely welcome gift from the king. Do you want to guess what it was? Was it a really big haggis? No. Was it a really big haggis? No, but... Nice, isn't it? That would be, yeah.

The butt of Momsby, whatever that stuff's called. Oh, Momsby Wine. Yeah. That's a nice Shakespearean allusion. Well done. Thank you. Very good. To drown someone in.

No, it's four and a half yards of red cloth. Okay, yeah. That makes sense now. Because they want Shakespeare's company to line the route during a royal procession in 1604. The king is going to parade through. Okay. And they want the company to wear the red cloth.

But, I mean, basically he's making Shakespeare wear the red carpet. Yes. He's like, you are the carpet. Stand there. So I don't know if it's a gift or if it's sort of slightly like, you are the carpet. Stand there. I don't know if it's a gift or if it's sort of slightly like, just lie down and make me look good. But this, is this a boost to

Shakespeare's renown and approval? I mean, it must be the king saying, you're my guy. Absolutely. I mean, the Kingsmen are a really prominent company at this point. They were already performing at court for Queen Elizabeth I, but they really do get to monopolise the court at this stage. I think it was something like seven out of 11 plays performed in 1604 were written by Shakespeare. And then they were performing at court up to about 107 times by the time Shakespeare died. So they were pretty prolific at court.

Yeah. The other thing that Shakespeare gets a little earlier, in 1596, during Elizabeth's reign, Shakespeare gets a family coat of arms, something his dad had long craved, you know, ale tasting and making gloves and all that, always on the make. Finally, the family gets its official coat of arms. Interesting life. Okay, well, we've come to the end of his life. William Shakespeare's dead.

We've killed him off. This is about the first folio and the legacy. But what is the first folio, Farah? So the first folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. So prior to that, Shakespeare's plays were published in single format called quartos. But the folio, it refers to Mr. William Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies. And it was edited and put together by Hemmings and Condell, who were his best friends in the company. It's pretty trustworthy. There are 18 plays that have never seen the light of day. So without the first folio, we wouldn't have those plays.

We wouldn't have The Tempest. We wouldn't have Comedy of Errors. We wouldn't have Twelfth Night. And we wouldn't have the Scottish play. Oh, really? Yeah, there's't have Comedy of Errors. We wouldn't have Twelfth Night. We wouldn't have the Scottish play. Oh, really? Yeah, there's only one edition of those plays. It kind of gives you a full picture of Shakespeare's career. If we didn't have it, we would

have a very different Shakespeare. And we think it's published in November? November 1623. So this is the 400th anniversary. Yay! Yay! Can we have a cheer for the 400th anniversary. Yay! Yay! Can we have a cheer for the first folio? Yay!

And that's a huge artistic legacy he leaves behind, but actually it's amazing. If we didn't have that folio, we'd have half of his plays. As you said before, Richard, there might be some missing. Who's going to curate your masterworks? Yeah, I don't know. I think it might be... I might be in trouble. I haven't made any friends.

My blog, which I've written every day for 22 years, is in the British Library. So that might be something. So, you know, you sort of never know, do you? No. I mean, because you're sort of actually better off being a sort of middling, unknown person, and then you're writing about more interesting things,

and it might be more interesting to historians. You might be the voice of the 21st century it might be the nuance window we've covered all sorts of things about william shakespeare and i think it's time now for the nuance window this is the part of the show where the spotlight falls on professor farrah as she tells us something we need to know about Shakespeare and his legacy. So without much further ado, Professor Farrar, the nuance window, please. Thank you. So Ben Johnson said that Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. I agree. But I guess this means Shakespeare is universal, right? His plays appeal to seemingly everyone, which would make him the greatest writer in the world, in history, in fact. The critic Harold Bloom went so far as to say Shakespeare invented us humans.

This would make Shakespeare a god. Or, as David Garrick said in 1769, the god of our idolatry. If this is true, why is it that Shakespeare, whose plays speak to different experiences across time and geography, can still feel inaccessible and exclusive to so many? At what point in the history of his reception did he become the unassailable beacon of English civility and culture, an identity that is still very much woven into the way we perform, teach, and talk about Shakespeare to this day. In his own time, Shakespeare, as we've heard, was a middle-class playwright from Warwickshire, who came to London to become part of a thrilling but scrappy and unrefined enterprise of making theater. He made plays not as a lone literary genius in Stratford, but with a company of players in Southwark.

Something happened, though, in the 18th century, the period of Enlightenment, when Shakespeare was first christened the Bard, referred to as a native genius, celebrated for his particular English sublimity and wit, called an instrument of nature. His talent viewed as natural and rooted in his English heritage. Statues and busts appear that seem to whitewash his image, his face chiseled in the neoclassical fashion, the messiness of theater and collaboration redacted from his works, and he's apotheosized as being apart from every other mortal, as one minister argued. This was at a time when English culture was getting a makeover. A heightened appreciation of art, literature, and music emerges, along with theories of aesthetics and taste, all leveraged

as the chief symbols of a civilized society. Harmless, right? Not when you consider the simultaneous escalation of maritime commerce and the full realization of England's role in the slave trade and empire. How do we reconcile the fact that Shakespeare is being lauded as the native genius while Britain was enslaving and colonising people overseas. So maybe best to topple that icon then, and go back to Shakespeare's words and stories. We might find troubling things there sometimes, but nothing we can't grapple with if we don't mind a bit of discomfort. Thank you very much.

Thoughts, Richard? Yeah, it was very good. I don't know. I'm going to top that. Good. Just saying. Good. Listener, if you want more Richard in your life, of course you do.

Check out our episode on Stonehenge. It's one of our bestest. For more theatre history, we have episodes on superstar actresses Nell Gwynne, Josephine Baker and Sarah Bernhardt. All really good fun. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends,

subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode, because we do these sneaky specials sometimes that just come out of nowhere like this one. But all that's left for me to say is a huge thank you. First, to our wonderful hosts, the Shakespeare North Playhouse up here in Prescott. Thank you so much.

Secondly, to our gorgeous audience. Thank you so much, audience. Give yourself a round of applause. And then, of course, in History Corner, we had the Queen of the Dramatic Arts, Professor Farah Karim Cooper. Thank you so much, Farah. And in Comedy Corner,

we had the King of Comedy himself, Richard Herring. Thank you, Richard. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we perform a new history play with another troupe of players. But for now, I'm off to go and design the Jenner coat of arms. I'm thinking a weasel in a tuxedo being loaded into a circus cannon. Perfect.

Bye! Bye! Thank you. Do you like octopuses? Do you like dinosaurs? Do you like astronauts? Do you like... I want to stop you there

because this is a trailer for The Infinite Monkey Cage. You should say that before you start doing all the enthusiastic stuff. Oh, yeah, you said, cut down the enthusiasm. That's very much more of a kind of Radio 2 thing you said, didn't you? Yes, this is information. Oh, OK. The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and Robin Inge returns... With octopuses, with astronauts, with dinosaurs.

I mean, not actually with. I mean, the astronauts are definitely in the studio. The octopus is less so. The dinosaur's the furthest away from being in the studio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Turned out nice again. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's.

It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca.