Abstract
Based in the town of Shakespeare’s birth, itself in the heart of England, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) cannot avoid being cast in the role of the nation’s Pythian serpent, guardian of the Bard’s flame and anointed declarer of prophetic utterance. The RSC has welcomed and exploited this destiny but knows there is also a damaging price to pay. The Company nurses a peculiar double burden of privilege and responsibility that reflects the contradictory position it finds itself in: it is nationally subsidized, with a local, national and international audience, presenting in Britain and abroad the works of the supreme icon of national as well as international writing in ways that aim both to honour authoritatively the truths of texts that are four centuries old, and at the same time to ind meanings in them that resonate for its diverse audiences today. Like the playwright whose name the company bears, the RSC has to be both particular and general in appeal; it has to be ‘authentic’ and represent continuity, yet continually be new and embody change, if it is not to die.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Select Bibliography
Addenbrooke, David, The Royal Shakespeare Company: The Peter Hall Years, London, William Kimber, 1974.
Beauman, Sally, The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Chambers, Colin, Other Spaces: New Theatre and the RSC, London, Eyre Methuen, 1980.
Dollimore, Jonathan and Sinfield, Alan (eds), Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1985.
Drakakis, John (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares, London, Methuen, 1985.
Fay, Stephen, Power Play: The Life and Times of Peter Hall, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
Goodwin, John (ed.), Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983.
Hall, Peter, Making an Exhibition of Myself, London, Sinclair-Stevens, 1993.
Hawkes, Terence, That Shakespearean Rag: Essays on a Critical Process, London, Methuen, 1986.
Holderness, Graham (ed.), The Shakespeare Myth, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988.
Joughin, John (ed.), Shakespeare and National Culture, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997.
Shaughnessy, Robert, Representing Shakespeare: England, History and the RSC, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Notes and References
Peter Hall, quoted in David Addenbrooke, The Royal Shakespeare Company: The Peter Hall Years (London: William Kimber, 1974), p. 66.
Illustrated Programme of the World Theatre Season, Aldwych Theatre, March 1964.
Foreword to Judith Cook, At the Sign of the Swan (London: Harrap), p. 9.
John Goodwin (ed.), Peter Hall’s Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), p. 209.
Chairman’s Report, RSC Annual Report: 121st Report of the Council 1996/97.
Illustrated Programme of the World Theatre Season.
Quoted in Stephen Fay, Power Play: The Life and Times of Peter Hall (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p. 187.
Goodwin (ed.), Peter Hall’s Diaries, p. 222.
The Times, 5 December 1972.
Addenbrooke, The Royal Shakespeare Company, p. 66.
Actor Hugh Quarshie, who played Antony in Hall’s 1995 Stratford production of Julius Caesar, used this description, quoted in Peter Holland, English Shakespeares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 4–5. In an interview with the author of this chapter (20 March 1998, unpublished), Hall volunteered this label himself.
Addenbrooke, The Royal Shakespeare Company, p. 227; and Sally Beauman, The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 267.
Peter Hall, Making an Exhibition of Myself (London: Sinclair-Stevens, 1993), pp. 76–7.
Nahum Tate (1652–1715), playwright and poet whose adaptations included King Lear with a happy ending; Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825) published an expurgated ‘Family Shakespeare’, hence to ‘bowdlerize’; David Garrick (1717–79), Henry Irving (1838–1905), Donald Wolfit (1902–68) and Laurence Olivier (1907–89), leading Shakespearean actors.
Quoted in The Independent, 2 February 1993.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2001 Colin Chambers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chambers, C. (2001). ‘Home, Sweet Home’: Stratford-upon-Avon and the Making of the Royal Shakespeare Company as a National Institution. In: Cartmell, D., Scott, M. (eds) Talking Shakespeare. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-98574-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-98574-8_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-77773-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-333-98574-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)