Shakespeare’s Popular Audience: Reconstructions and Deconstructions

Abstract

On Saturday, 25 March 2006, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary entitled Lenny and Will, in which the comedian Lenny Henry explored his own fascination with, and intimidation by, Shakespearean performance, interviewing such theatrical illuminati as Sir Peter Hall, Dame Judi Dench, and Sir Trevor Nunn. Henry wrote a short piece on the broadcast for the same week’s Radio Times; in a neat symbol of the documentary’s characterisation of a clash between highbrow (Shakespearean theatre) and lowbrow (Henry the working-class comic), the article was accompanied by a photograph of a perplexed-looking Henry staring at a bust of Shakespeare. The quotation above is from that article, and I begin this chapter with it because it encapsulates some of the assumptions and aspirations which underpin many of the ‘popular Shakespeares’ considered in this chapter.

[T]he Globe feels really inclusive rather than what I always hated about Shakespeare, that it was exclusive and for posh people. … And this is what’s made me want to do this programme, because I think that the thematic quality of Shakespeare should bring us all together. It speaks to all of us — working-class and kings.

(Lenny Henry, Radio Times, 25–31 March 2006)