Shakespeare and the Birth of the Gunpowder Plot

409 years ago, on 20 May 1604, the five principal conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot met for the first time.

Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes aka Guido Fawkes, Thomas Wintour, John Wright and Thomas Percy all met in London, at the Duck and Drake Inn, off the Strand.

An Elizabethan-era Inn

Catesby was in charge of the Plot, and it was his idea to blow up Parliament on its opening day. He wanted to kill King James and his family, and murder as many men in the government as possible.

Catesby is believed to have been born in Warwickshire. His family were prominent Catholics who violated the recusancy laws by practicing their faith in secret.

His father spent many years in prison for breaking the law, which included harboring the famous Jesuit priest Edmund Campion. His relative Sir Francis Throckmorton was executed for his part in the attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and replace her with her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots.

At some point in Catesby’s life, probably after the death of his beloved wife Catherine, he became radicalized. 

He was involved in the failed Essex Rebellion against Queen Elizabeth in 1601, for which he was put in prison and forced to pay a crushing penalty.

It is very likely that he met William Shakespeare at one point or another in those years.

Shakespeare was from Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire.

Shakespeare’s friend and patron was the Earl of Essex, who led the failed Essex Rebellion. It is entirely possible that Shakespeare met Catesby around the time that Catesby joined Essex’s conspiracy.

One of Catesby’s ancestors, Sir William Catesby, was one of Richard III’s councillors. Shakespeare included him as a character in his Richard III play. 

Brass rubbing of Sir William Catesby

It is entirely likely that Catesby would have visited the theatre to see how Shakespeare depicted his ancestor on stage. 

He may not have liked it, since his ancestor was called a "dull and unmindful villain" on a public London stage.

I am not suggesting that Shakespeare was a co-conspirator in the Essex Rebellion or in the Gunpowder Plot.

But Catesby, as well as the other Gunpowder Plot conspirators, give us a look into the life of Shakespeare that has not been explored in detail.

Shakespeare knew many people in his years in London. In the years from 1593 to 1610, he was the most famous man in London.

He would have wanted to meet the rich, the powerful and the influential. They would have wanted to meet him. 

Some of these people were leading lives as recusant Catholics. Shakespeare may or may not have who was or was not a secret Catholic.

But he could not have been ignorant of the fact that any one of them could be a potential threat to the state. Any one of them could be a terrorist, or could be harboring potential terrorists, or could be funding terrorists.

Shakespeare’s life was bad enough with the threat of the plague, the occasional closing of the theatres, and deaths in his family.

He also had to worry about his reputation.

Shakespeare had to tread very cautiously in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. It was very risky if he was too close to anyone, whether they were rich and powerful or not.

He could never know if the man or woman he just met would turn out to be part of a plot against the state.

The closest Shakespeare had come to being implicated in a plot was the Essex Rebellion. 

In my version of Hamlet, I portray the events surrounding the Rebellion and Shakespeare's involvement with the Earl of Essex.

If Shakespeare had the even the slightest knowledge of the Essex Rebellion it could have cost him his life.

The famous playwright Thomas Kyd had been imprisoned and tortured for less. Ben Jonson had been imprisoned for less. Christopher Marlowe may have been murdered for far less. 

I think Shakespeare paid a price for the Essex Rebellion, and I think he did in fact almost lose his life because of it.

In the years after, Shakespeare would have been more reluctant to associate with men like Essex, or Catesby.

But he knew they were out there.

When Catesby and the others met for the first time on 20 May 1604, it was a Sunday.

They swore an oath of secrecy on a prayer book.

Just after that, in another room, the Jesuit priest John Gerard celebrated an illegal Mass with them, and they took the Sacrament of the Holy Communion together. 

Father John Gerard

Gerard later claimed that he had no knowledge of the Plot, despite the fact that he was friends with Catesby. I find this very hard to believe.

On that Sunday, Shakespeare would have attended church. The theatre was normally open on Sundays but there was a plague so bad in these early days of King James's reign that all theatres were closed.

It was a frightening time in the early days of King James's reign.

Shakespeare knew that before long, especially since King James was abusing his power and making the country suffer, it could get much worse.

Shakespeare would perform Othello for the first time in November 1604. He must have been already thinking about the play, and figuring out the plot and the characters.

Shakespeare wrote Othello for many reasons, one of which was to warn the King that he was not uniting the country, but in fact tearing the country apart, especially along religious lines.

Shakespeare may not have known that there were Catholics who were conspiring to kill King James at that very moment, probably not so far away from him, but it would not have surprised him in the least.



Cheers,


David B. Schajer

BUY NOW from Google Play

Shakespeare and Marlowe's Last Words

420 years ago today, on 20 May 1593, the famous playwright Christopher Marlowe appeared before the Privy Council to answer to the charges of heresy.

As I wrote recently, Marlowe’s flatmate and the fellow playwright Thomas Kyd had been arrested on the suspicion of writing posts around London which the authorities considered heresy.

He was tortured, and he implicated Marlowe.

An arrest warrant for Marlowe had been issued on 18 May.

It is surprising that Marlowe waited an extra day to appear before Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council.

What was he doing?

He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would run from a fight.

If anything, he probably relished the opportunity to stir up even more trouble and face the Council immediately.

Would he have visited Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange? At that time, Stanley may have been the aristocratic patron to Marlowe, Kyd and even Shakespeare.

Would Stanley and Marlowe prepared Marlowe’s defense strategy together?

Ferdinando Stanley

At this point in history, Stanley had a very good claim to the throne, and was quickly becoming a threat to Queen Elizabeth.

Stanley had attracted many of the greatest actors and playwrights, and his playing company, Lord Strange’s Men was one of the very best in London.

If Marlowe visited with Stanley, and if Shakespeare was employed by Stanley, is it possible that Shakespeare saw Marlowe, even if only briefly on 18 or 19 May 1593?

If Marlowe did speak with Shakespeare, I often wonder what they would have said to each other?

Both playwrights, in early 1593, had been almost entirely out of work since the theatres were closed almost continuously since June 1592 due to the plague.

Marlowe’s career may have been stalling. He was at work on his poem Hero and Leander. When there was a break in the plague in late January 1593, his last play, The Massacre at Paris was performed.

The play, which dealt with the religious violence in France and specifically the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre would not have been appreciated by Queen Elizabeth and her court. The last thing they would have wanted an audience to see is a bloodbath of religious violence on stage.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare’s career was going very well. He had just published his erotic poem, Venus and Adonis. It was the Fifty Shades of Grey of the Elizabethan period, and he must have been enjoying some of the greatest success of his career.

They were not entirely friends and nor were they entirely enemies. I think Marlowe liked Shakespeare but looked down on him. 

They were born only a few weeks apart, Marlowe in February 1564 and Shakespeare in April 1564. Marlowe’s father was a shoemaker. Shakespeare’s father was a glovemaker.

Marlowe went to Cambridge. Shakespeare’s family could not afford to send him to university.

Marlowe became an overnight success right after university.

Shakespeare’s success came quickly, but not as fast as Marlowe's.

Marlowe and Kyd had blazed the trail for future playwrights like Shakespeare, and I think Marlowe would have always looked at any future playwrights, no matter how talented, and especially if they showed true talent like Shakespeare, as inferior.

I like to imagine that Shakespeare would have told Marlowe not to rock the boat. He may have begged him not to jeopardize the remarkable freedom they had enjoyed as actors and playwrights, the kind of freedom England had never known before.

The theatres were closed. If Marlowe, as London's greatest playwright, disturbed the peace between the theatres and Queen Elizabeth, she might just decide to close the theatres permanently.

She had allowed them to flower and develop, and had allowed playhouses like The Theatre to be built, the first theatre built for plays in England since the Roman times.

Shakespeare wouldn’t want to stop being a playwright. He belonged in a theatre. To him, very little else mattered.

Theatre in England had just been born, and Shakespeare would have pleaded with Marlowe not to kill it in it's infancy.

I think Shakespeare's words would have fallen on deaf ears.

Marlowe strikes me as the kind of man who would destroy the entire theatre community if it helped score a political point against the Queen.

I think Marlowe would have mentioned Venus and Adonis, which I'm sure he would have read immediately, and probably made fun of Shakespeare for having written Elizabethan mommy porn.

I think that Marlowe would have antagonized Shakespeare. Marlowe may have known that Shakespeare was likely to eclipse his own fame and success, so he would have asked if Shakespeare thought he was better than him.

Shakespeare would have said no, of course. He would have politely told him that he, Marlowe, was the greater and more significant artist.

I think Marlowe would have thanked Shakespeare for his advice.

Then he would have told Shakespeare to go stuff it.

Whether it was on 18 or 19 May, or shortly after, the last words between Shakespeare and Marlowe would probably not have been very kind.

Shakespeare and Marlowe
Were they the best of friends and worst of enemies?

Shakespeare would have been even more worried after seeing Marlowe.

Marlowe went to the Privy Council on 20 May. For some odd reason, there were not in session and did not hear him.

Within days, Marlowe was dead, under suspicious circumstances. He was only 29 years old.

Ferdinando Stanley would die, on 16 April 1594, under suspicious circumstances. He was only 35 years old.

Thomas Kyd, whose career was ruined, would die in August 1594, most likely from the wounds he suffered while tortured in prison. He was only 35 years old.

In late 1594, Shakespeare was at a terrifying and crucial point in his life. His greatest friends and rivals in the theatres were gone, but so too was his patron.

Shakespeare was free to dominate the theatre scene in London. All he needed to find was a new patron, who could provide him with political cover.

Shakespeare must have thought himself lucky to have both Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton -- not just one but two noblemen who were eager to become Shakespeare’s patrons.

Cheers,

David B. Schajer

Related Articles:

Ferdinando Stanley and the Chandos Portrait of Shakespeare

Hamlet and the Massacre at Paris

Fifty Shades of Shakespeare

BUY NOW from iTunes

Shakespeare & Thomas Kyd's Arrest

420 years ago, on 11 May 1593, Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council issued an arrest warrant for the authors of “lewd and mutinous libels” which had been posted around London.

Queen Elizabeth with William Cecil, Lord Burleigh and Francis Walsingham

William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, as the heads of the Privy Council and the Queen's spy and intelligence network, took any threat to the state and the Queen very seriously.

Many people were arrested.

The playwright Thomas Kyd was swept up in this dragnet the very next day, perhaps a victim of an informer -- a neighbor perhaps.

His flat was searched. The authorities didn’t find any of the libels. They did find a Arianist tract, which preached that Jesus, the Son of God was subordinate to God the Father. The investigators considered the tract to be heresy.

Kyd was tortured by the authorities. How and to what degree? We don't know, but we do know that Kyd suffered terrible bodily harm. I think the Scavenger's Daughter is a likely choice.

The Scavenger's Daughter, invented in the reign of Elizabeth's father Henry VIII

At some point, Kyd told them that he got the tract from his flat-mate and fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe.

A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest.

What would Shakespeare have thought at this moment in history?

The entire theatre community in London, from the play-poets to the actors to the young men studying law at the Inns of Court who frequented The Theatre and The Curtain, must have been terrified.

It was bad enough that the plague had closed the theatres almost continually from June of the last year.

This was worse. Kyd and Marlowe were two of the most famous men who walked the streets of London, and who had met just about everyone there was to know.

What would they say? What did they know? Who else might they implicate? 

If the Queen’s Privy Council wanted to scare people away from the theatres, and send a chill down the spine of the theatre community, they couldn’t have chosen a better way to do it.

Thomas Kyd must have known Shakespeare. They may never have been close, and may never have written together, but it is doubtful that they never met at some point or another.

Shakespeare had great early success with his Henry VI plays (1589-90) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590-1). It’s impossible to think that Shakespeare was off anyone’s radar in those days, and Kyd and Marlowe would have been curious to see what all the fuss was about with this upstart Shakespeare.

It is also impossible to think that Shakespeare had not seen The Spanish Tragedy and Tamburlaine.

Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy for the stage somewhere between 1582 and 1592. It was very influential, and it inspired just about every future playwright.

It was important because it created a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy.

This play includes a ghost who returns from the dead to take his revenge, a character named Horatio, a character who is mad with grief, another character named Hieronimo, who is driven insane, and who devises a play within a play that concludes with a lot of dead people on stage.

This clearly inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet play, with the ghost of Hamlet’s father who has come to take his revenge, has a character named Horatio, and whose hero named Hamlet is mad with grief and is driven insane in his pursuit to avenge his father, and who stages a play within a play, and by the conclusion there are a lot of dead bodies on stage.

In fact, Kyd may have written a play which has become known as the ur-Hamlet play. It was a play which is believed to have been written and performed around 1589 and told the story that resembles the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet play, which is believed to have been written around 1599-1601.

I happen to think that Kyd did not write the ur-Hamlet play. I think that Shakespeare himself wrote an early and unsuccessful version of the Hamlet story in around 1589, as a gift of sorts for his son Hamnet, whose name is interchangeable with the name Hamlet. His final version of the play was written in 1601, to celebrate the memory of the Earl of Essex.

In any event, when Shakespeare arrived in London around 1587, the two biggest names in theatre were Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe.

Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine the Great was all the rage in 1587, just when Shakespeare was getting settled in London, to start his career.

By the time that Kyd and Marlowe were in jail, Shakespeare was quite a successful play-poet, but nowhere as famous as them. Also, Shakespeare’s success was by no means secure, he had only just begun his career.

For all he knew, the arrest of Kyd and Marlowe might close the theatres forever, and Shakespeare’s entire career might come to an end in May 1593.

We do not properly understand or appreciate how difficult Shakespeare’s life was. When we do take a moment to look at his life, he is a constant reminder that no matter how hard life may be, it is possible to pull through.

With the plague, it was a miracle he was born, a miracle that he survived to be an adult, and a miracle that he lived to be over 50. 

We don’t often stop and appreciate how politically charged and dangerous London was at the time. 

It was a time where neighbors informed on each other, when the Queen’s Privy Council ran a spy network on their own people which could arrest you, search your flat, and torture you for information.

This was a dark time in Shakespeare’s life, and I wonder if he considered heading back to Stratford.

But he may have feared doing so. If he ran, would that not have been an indication that he had something to hide. The authorities could always snatch him in Stratford.

Really, he had no choice. He may have wanted to run away, but he had to stay.

If we stop for a moment and look at this day in Shakespeare’s life -- we might see a man, stuck in his flat, who just wants to write and perform plays, but has no theatre to perform in and no audience to perform for.

It was this same month that Shakespeare published his erotic poem Venus and Adonis -- which was the Fifty Shades of Grey of the Elizabethan period.

He had to make money somehow, and if he couldn’t be a play-poet then he would be a published poet.

Shakespeare was gifted, he was smart, he worked hard, and he was resilient throughout his life.

But in the days while Kyd and Marlowe were locked up, Shakespeare must have had to dig very deep to find strength and hope.

The fact that he did, and the fact that he not only survived but triumphed is a miracle in itself.

Cheers,

David B. Schajer

BUY NOW from iTunes

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson's Conversion

403 years ago, in May 1610, the famous poet and playwright Ben Jonson renounced his Catholic faith and became a Protestant -- again.

Jonson was born into a Protestant household. 

He lived his life as an observant and law-abiding Protestant.

But in 1598, when he was 26 years old, and becoming famous and infamous for the plays he wrote, he killed a man named Gabriel Spencer.

Jonson went to jail, and while in jail he renounced his Protestant faith and became a Catholic.

Why did he do this?

Jonson, like many people in England at the time, may have been sympathetic to Catholics, who had to remain underground for fear of persecution by Queen Elizabeth.

Jonson may have been of the opinion that the war with Spain would not go well for England, there might even be a Spanish invasion, and sooner than later there would be a Catholic monarch on the throne of England.

I think the answer is much more simpler and personal. 

The most persuasive answer to me is that Jonson really was a Catholic in his heart. 

He was concerned that he would be executed for his crime and he wanted to receive Catholic absolution for his soul.

He was not executed, and he went free from jail.

Spain did not invade England, and Elizabeth remained Queen -- at least until 1603.

Jonson had to keep his new faith quiet. He had to stay underground for many long years.

When James was crowned King of England in 1603, Jonson may have been optimistic that there would be greater toleration of Catholics.

He was wrong. King James did not make the situation any better for Catholics.

But his wife, the Queen Consort Anne, was a secret Catholic like Jonson.

Anne became Jonson’s un-official patron. She especially liked the court masque entertainments he wrote -- and which she would occasionally star in.

He may have found a certain degree of religious freedom at court, and especially with Anne.

But in November 1605, with the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic conspiracy to kill King James and blow up Parliament, Jonson would have been terrified that he might be arrested because of his faith.

He had good reason to fear. The Gunpowder Plot conspirators frequently met at the Mermaid Tavern -- the same tavern that Jonson visited the most.

In fact, he was accused of recusancy. He had the habit of slipping out of church during the sacrament, in order to not offend his Catholic conscience.

He and his wife went to court to answer for their recusancy. For some reason, perhaps because of his fame and his status at court, he was punished lightly with a fine.

But the ultimate test of Jonson’s Catholic faith came in 1610.

As I have recently written, King Henry IV of France was killed on 14 May 1610 by a Catholic  assassin.

Assassination of King Henry IV of France

Jonson publicly renounced his Catholic faith. He was afraid that Catholics would be punished like they had after the Gunpowder Plot.

Was his conversion sincere?

I don’t think so. He probably remained a secret Catholic in his heart.

I often wonder, was Jonson the true man of the times?

Or was Shakespeare?

Was Jonson -- who changed his faith back and forth, but was most likely a secret Catholic his whole life -- more representative of the Elizabethan era than Shakespeare?

Shakespeare -- as far as we know, was born a Protestant and stayed that way his whole life.

He did not find himself in trouble like Jonson did.

He did not seem to want to go looking for trouble like Jonson did.

And I have a hard time imagining that Shakespeare would ever kill a man in a duel -- or put himself in the position to have to defend his honor with a weapon.

Jonson may in fact have been more the man of the times than Shakespeare. 

After all, King Henry IV of France was baptised a Catholic, became a Protestant and then converted back to being a Catholic again.

The English Reformation was a tumultuous and confusing time. Change was often sudden and violent.

Jonson seemed to change with the times.

Shakespeare did not. He seems more constant, almost above the fray as it were.

But as I look deeper into his life and times, and as I have written in this blog and in my versions of Hamlet, Richard III and The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare emerges as a more fascinating man.

He emerges as a man who was deeply involved with the politics of the time and religious change -- friends with and patronized by some of the most powerful and historically important people of the time, like Ferdinando Stanley, Robert Devereux, Henry Wriothesley, and many more.

But his brilliance was putting all of the energy he had -- regarding the English Reformation, Queen Elizabeth and King James -- into his plays.

As I have written before, Shakespeare fought his own personal fight in the Reformation, but he fought it with a quill pen and not a sword.

He did not take up arms in the streets or slip out of church. He was famous for not going to taverns often. He stayed in his lodgings, and wrote words.

His plays, while full of topical and controversial issues, always seemed to stay within the lines. His plays passed the royal censors, and he built upon his success so when even he would get in trouble, he was too influential to be silenced.

When Shakespeare died in 1616, Ben Jonson famously said: "He was not of an age, but for all time."

I think Jonson did not intend this to be taken entirely as a compliment.

I think he resented Shakespeare for not having taken a more active part in the politics of the day.

Jonson was also admitting that he, Jonson himself, was of the age in which he lived.

Jonson could probably tell that while he would enjoy his greatest success while he lived during his own lifetime, he knew that Shakespeare would enjoy his greatest success forever after.

Cheers,

David B. Schajer

BUY NOW from iTunes

The Shakespeare Theatre Company's Coriolanus

I saw Coriolanus last night in Washington, D.C. at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall.

It was excellent.

If you are in or near Washington, you must go see it. It runs through 2 June.

The STC’s production of The Winter’s Tale has just begun and I will be seeing it soon. That play runs through June 23.

I am not a professional theatre critic, but I do want to share some thoughts about the play, and what it probably meant to Shakespeare himself.

The whole production is very engaging and full of energy -- and the cast deserves much of the credit for that.

They are all so good.

Of course, the big role is Coriolanus, and the star of the show is Patrick Page -- who is just about the hardest working American stage actor. 

Patrick Page as Coriolanus, photo by Scott Suchman

He was the first actor to play Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin in the Spiderman musical, directed by Julie Taymor. And as you can see for yourself, he has done a lot of Shakespeare.

It shows. He commands the stage like the military hero he is playing.

Also, for a character such as Coriolanus, who is famous for being opaque -- unclear in his motivations and actions, especially since he has no long soliloquies to help us see into him -- Patrick Page brings a certain clarity to the man. 

He makes sense of the character in a way that surprised me. I think it is the vulnerability he brought to the character. He somehow made this great warrior Coriolanus more human.

But what was even more gratifying is that despite the fact that the Coriolanus role could overwhelm the whole play, the rest of the cast was able to shine as well.

All of the other actors were very good at not only defining who they were as characters, but they were brilliant at giving definition to the role of Coriolanus. 

I saw Christopher Walken as Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1988. He was good, and I enjoyed the play, but he completely overshadowed the rest of the cast.

As a result, I had difficulty understanding the play.

I admit that I have not studied the play very much since then, because the meaning of the play and the motivation of Coriolanus seemed to be impenetrable.

I think the problem with the version I saw with Christopher Walken was that the play needs to be more of an ensemble, and not a vehicle for the lead actor playing Coriolanus.

The version I saw last night solved that problem.

From Left: Aaryn Kopp, Patrick Page, Diane D'Aquila and Reginald Andre Jackson
 photo by Scott Suchman

Diane D’Aquila as his mother Volumnia, Aaryn Kopp as his wife Virgilia, Robert Sicular as arguably his closest friend Menenius, Reginald Andre Jackson as his bitter rival and later his ally Aufidius, and especially Hunter Zane as his son Young Martius -- all of them were so good in their roles, but more importantly they advanced the story and made the story much more clear.

The rest of the cast is excellent, and all of them help to bring meaning to the character of Coriolanus. 

But if we focus on what the other characters say and how they behave towards him, it becomes much easier to understand who and what he is.

In that respect, the play was very engrossing in a way that I did not anticipate.

The director David Muse deserves a great deal of credit for his inventive staging, inspired choice of music, like the use of drums throughout -- sometimes humorous and sometimes very dramatic.

Photo by Scott Suchman

But more than anything, I appreciated the emphasis on the other actors, and not just on Coriolanus.

The story and the character unfolded for me, and I was able to imagine what it was like for Shakespeare to write this play and stage in around 1608.

This would have been one of Shakespeare’s last plays. I sensed a certain exhaustion in the writing, a certain lack of humor, and messages that he had written in other earlier plays.

There are funny moments to be sure, but the central action of the story, of the rise and fall of this famous military hero is so dramatic that it sucks all of the air out of the room. 

Shakespeare is famous for giving funny lines to minor characters to humanize the stories and give us a break from all of the high drama. I don’t think it works in Coriolanus, and it’s not the fault of the actors or the director. It's in the language. 

Basically, when the drama is so high, and the humor is so low, then the jokes fall flat.

Shakespeare had sent many of the same messages found within Coriolanus in other earlier plays like Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Richard III and especially King Lear.

It is no surprise that Coriolanus was written during the reign of King James. Shakespeare wrote Othello, Macbeth and King Lear while he was the official royal actor and playwright to the court of King James. 

Shakespeare was a King’s Man, and he wrote these plays not only for but about King James.

Without going into great detail, recently I discovered the true identity of Shakespeare’s Othello character. 

Shakespeare’s Othello character is based on a famous Roman Emperor Otho. But Otho has a lot in common with King James himself. 

So, Othello is Otho is King James.

What that says about Shakespeare and his relationship to the King should give you an idea of what he was saying to King James, when Coriolanus would have been performed for the King at court -- and what he was saying about King James when the play would have been performed for the public at The Globe Theatre and Blackfriars.

In simple terms, Shakespeare was asking the King to disrobe himself for the public, and he was asking the public to see the King for the man he was. 

The scene with Coriolanus in his "gown of humility" where he must show his wounds to the public in order to get their votes to become consul is critical, and the scene was done to perfection last night at the STC.

It should come as no surprise that Shakespeare, who found the story of Emperor Otho in Plutarch, should use Plutarch again to tell the story of Coriolanus.

Emperor Otho committed suicide to help stop the growing civil war in Italy. Coriolanus, after he is banished from Rome, begs his mortal enemy Aufidius to kill him.

Shakespeare is saying many of the same things with both plays. 

It is hard to pinpoint it, but I do sense a certain exhaustion in the writing. I think Shakespeare was getting tired of saying the same things over and over again.

By this moment in his life and career, whatever enthusiasm and energy he had, whatever dreams he had of changing the world, were quickly fading.

I don’t think he wanted to bring down the government, I don’t think he was an anarchist. 

But I do think that he was afraid of the monarchy. He had seen it up close in a way that few others had, and he could see how powerful and potentially destructive it could be.

Coriolanus’s complaints about meeting the public are very likely drawn directly from his eye-witness experiences with King James.

We know that the beginning of the play, with the food riots, are drawn from real history, and there were popular revolts during King James's reign.

I think Coriolanus’s contempt for the rioters is very much like King James’s contempt for his subjects.

Finally, when Shakespeare was writing this play he was not only concerned with the dangers and abuses of power by King James himself, but of what lessons King James's children were learning from their father.

One day, King James would die and one of his children, Prince Henry most likely, would succeed him.

Shakespeare was wise enough to be worried about those future Stuart monarchs.

In the production I saw last night, the director completely understood Shakespeare on this issue, and the scenes between Coriolanus and his son were excellent, and came to a great climax.

I don't want to ruin the ending of the play as I saw it last night, but it struck exactly the right note. 

I am very excited to have seen this production by the Shakespeare Theatre Company. It allowed me to enjoy the play, understand the play much better than before, and tap into what Shakespeare was saying with this play -- over 400 years ago.

I strongly recommend that you see this production!

Cheers,

David B. Schajer

BUY NOW from Amazon