Shakespeare in Three Dimensions

The Dramaturgy of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet

Robert Blacker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351978996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

In Shakespeare in Three Dimensions, Robert Blacker asks us to set aside what we think we know about Shakespeare and rediscover his plays on the page, and as Shakespeare intended, in the rehearsal room and in performance. That process includes stripping away false traditions that have obscured his observations about people and social institutions that are still vital to our lives today. This book explores the verities of power and love in Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, as an example of how to mine the extraordinary detail in all of Shakespeare's plays, using the knowledge of both theatre practitioners and scholars to excavate and restore them.

Part I

Romeo and Juliet

What’s in a word?

1 The boys

Two men enter. Some older editions call the men servants, but most contemporary editors use the words of the authoritative published version, the Second Quarto of 1599.¹ It designates the men simply as “of the house of Capulet.” We never learn what their position within the household is, but rank is important to them. Something has happened offstage. They have been insulted, and they do not want to be seen as menials. As parentheses occur in Shakespeare’s texts, I use brackets to add definitions and complete phrases to explicate the text: these are not suggestions for changes. I also italicize words to make points, such as the series of homophonic puns below, which begin with allusions to class:²

SAMSON Gregory, on my word we’ll not carry coals [“do dirty work;” proverbially, “put up with insults”].³

GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers [“who carry coals for sale”].⁴

SAMSON I mean, an [if] we be in choler, we’ll draw [our swords].

GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar [a hangman’s noose].⁵

Samson and Gregory are often performed as if they are the same character, but Shakespeare differentiates characters, even in smaller roles. The Murderers in Macbeth are differentiated, for example, and their scene with Macbeth is built around this difference. Shakespeare was an actor and understood how to write for actors. The difference between his characters creates a tension that gives scenes their shape. Here, the appropriately named Samson continually flaunts his machismo, and Gregory, who enjoys taunting him and provoking him, repeatedly deflates his macho posturing:

SAMSON I strike quickly being moved [to do so].

GREGORY But thou are not quickly moved to strike.

SAMSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

GREGORYTo move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand [and fight]: therefore if thou art moved thou runn’st away.

SAMSON A dog of that house shall move me to stand.⁶

The wordplay here is intense. In Shakespeare, people of all classes play with words: this should come as no surprise to us in the age of rap. In this dialogue, Samson and Gregory repeat each other’s words – moved, quickly, stand – and expand or twist their meanings.⁷ The actors must listen closely to each other in order to do this. Carol Burnett told me that another great comedian, Lucille Ball, said the key to her timing was to listen to the other actor. This is essential to performing Shakespeare, whether the scene is comedic or dramatic. Shakespeare’s lines build off each other. His scenes build off each other. His drama proceeds from what has happened before. Shakespeare is a master of this, and it is fundamental both to dramatic writing and to understanding Shakespeare’s art. The key to an elusive line can usually be found in the ones that precede it.

Samson next asserts his prowess with women. Shakespeare typically is direct about sex. Samson says he will push Montague’s men into the gutter, which in Elizabethan England would be filled with garbage and manure, and “thrust his maids to the wall,” where they will enjoy his “piece of flesh.”⁸ Shakespeare understood that threats of violence are often cloaked in sexual innuendo. For his part, Gregory replies that Samson’s piece of flesh is poor fare.

Note how Shakespeare now exposes Samson and Gregory. Two Montagues now enter, and what do Samson and Gregory do? These macho men decide to frown at the Montagues as they pass. They are only willing to insult the Montagues openly when they see another Capulet – Tybalt – offstage, and numbers are on their side. Shakespeare ends their part of the scene by revealing the emptiness of Samson and Gregory’s bravado. This gives the scene a progression. The “tragedy” of Romeo and Juliet as it is called both in folio and quarto editions begins with a satiric scene that is an astute critique of machismo.

Swords are now drawn, but another Montague, Benvolio, enters before Tybalt. Benvolio draws his sword to part the two factions, but this is a mistake. In the violent world of this play, the peacemakers are ineffective because they are inevitably drawn into the fight. Romeo repeats this pattern in the middle of the play. Repetition of patterns is key to dramatic structure. Here, in the opening scene, Tybalt enters and sees that Benvolio has drawn his sword. This gives him an excuse to challenge Benvolio. Tybalt is appalled that Benvolio would fight men beneath his social class, but he will fight Benvolio:

What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?

Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.⁹

“Heartless hinds” is a semantic pun: each word has two meanings. The phrase means menials (hinds) without courage (heart), as well as female deer (hinds) without a male (hart) to protect them. Tybalt insults these men by calling them both cowardly menials and, in his eyes, defenseless women, and so the brawl begins. Throughout the play violence is associated with derogatory expressions of social and sexual status – still the language of machismo today.

Ralph Berry writes in Shakespeare and Social Class:

The entire action is presented through the class register. Tybalt, for example, enters the play on a class note, “What, are thou drawn among these heartless hinds?” … and leaves it on a sneer of the same order, “Thou wretched boy, that dids’t consort with him here, / Shalt with him hence.” … In between he has received some rough handling from his host at the party: Capulet’s address turns rapidly from “gentle coz” to “goodman boy”; (which places him below a yeoman) … In choler, these people reach first for the epithet of class disdain.¹⁰

A yeoman “cultivates his own land” but a goodman is “a tenant of a specified estate or farm, obsolete,” Berry notes.¹¹ The choice of words is important in Shakespeare.

The Citizens of Verona now enter and cry out: “Down with the Capulets, down with the Montagues!”¹² It is easy to understand why they are so upset. The enmity between the two households has “thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets,”¹³ as the Prince will tell us when he enters. The wreckage from the brawl must be considerable enough to earn Romeo’s comment on it when he enters.

But first, Capulet enters in his dressing gown, which indicates that it is early morning. His two-line exchange with his wife is packed with detail about them. The Lord and Lady designations for the Capulets and Montagues that appear in older editions of this play are not in the First Folio or the authoritative Second Quarto (see Chapter 2). They are wealthy, but not necessarily nobility. The Oxford World’s Classics edition uses these designations and this formatting to distinguish verse passages:

CAPULET

What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!

CAPULET’S WIFE

A crutch, a crutch – why call you for a sword?¹⁴

The out-of-date long sword was useless in the time of the lightweight rapier. It suggests Capulet’s age. His wife’s reprimand indicates the state of their marriage. She does not hesitate to mock him in public. Montague’s Wife holds back her husband with more neutral words: “Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.”¹⁵ Shakespeare begins to define the nature of these two relationships right from the beginning.

The Prince now enters with his entourage. The length of his speech has a dramatic purpose: his presence is not enough to end the fighting. The Prince’s anger – “Will they not hear?”¹⁶ – expresses his frustration that it takes him eight lines of verse to bring the brawl to an end. Shakespeare often puts important stage directions into his dialogue. The Prince too is punished for his inability to keep the peace. There are really three households in Romeo and Juliet, and each loses “a brace [two] of kinsmen.”¹⁷ Mercutio and Paris are the Prince’s cousins, and these relationships become critical to understanding Shakespeare’s play. The Prince now tells Montague and Capulet that their “lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace,” if this happens again.¹⁸ He asks Capulet to go with him and asks Montague to meet with him later. Details are significant in Shakespeare. As we learn later Capulet is the more volatile of the two: perhaps the Prince knows he must deal with him immediately.

Shakespeare’s plays cannot fully speak to us if we make cuts before we understand the purpose of that material. Sampson and Gregory and the brawl that follows are the playwright’s invention. What Shakespeare brings to the table and how his plays differ from their source materials give us insight into the play.¹⁹ Jill L. Levenson writes: “Shakespeare dramatized a story familiar to his audience through popular sources for at least thirty years.”²⁰ The opening scene is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Romeo and Juliet: what’s in a word?
• Part II Macbeth: beyond the dialogue
• Index