February must come to a close eventually. We have an extra day to the shortest month this year. With that, we have another day to listen to the echoes of Shakespeare’s voice.
Shakespeare crosses borders and defines identities, even in the most dangerous of ways. “Ten actors are hoping to redefine Shakespeare – and the public perception of Afghanistan – by taking part in one of the most ambitious theatre festivals of all time,” Harriet Shawcross and Tahir Qadiry report. “They are part of an extraordinary attempt to stage Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors in Dari at The Globe theatre in London. In April they will leave Afghanistan, and their families, for the first time and travel to London to perform in Shakespeare’s historic theatre. To mark the Cultural Olympiad the Globe is staging each of Shakespeare’s plays – in 37 different languages. These include The Tempest from Bangladesh, Cymbeline from South Sudan and Love’s Labour’s Lost in British Sign Language. The six-week festival culminates in an Afghan Comedy of Errors. The production is masterminded by director Corinne Jaber, who once performed with the RSC, and has transposed Shakespeare’s early farce to modern-day Afghanistan.”
Despite the limitations on the play and on the actors and actresses, it is not enough to stop them from exploring the Bard. As one of the actors, Shah Mohammed, says, ”The only things people associate Afghanistan with are drugs, war and terrorism. The reason we wanted to do this play is to show the world that Afghanistan is not what you think: it has talented people, and rich culture. There has been war, but life goes on.” The Bard helps them explore the depths of their culture and character.
Even in the safer realms, Shakespeare’s voice still resonates. Though the debate on Shakespeare’s character rages on (in some sectors) the fact that the Bard is still being talked about, is the most important aspect. Kathryn James and David Kastan explores the truth behind Shakespearean forgeries, “But what this all proves–the work of the forgers, the passion of the doubters, and the efforts of scholars for the last three hundred years–is that Shakespeare matters to us. We want to solve the mystery of his genius. In an exhibition, Remembering Shakespeare, on view at Yale’s Beinecke Library until June 4, the story of that desire is memorably told in books, objects, and pictures, from the earliest editions of Shakespeare and the handwritten evidence of his first readers, to the later Shakespeare editions that have spread the plays across the entire world and the non-literary evidence of their extraordinary impact. And all of it is real.”
Whether one accepts or rejects Shakespeare’s identity, the fact of the matter is, he is a part of our lives — to the point that his worst dissenters actually affirm the love and fascination over the Bard.
From countries to cultures, Shakespeare’s influence starts on the individual. Paul Edmonson writes on the new voices of Shakespeare, “Shakespeare and I is a collection of essays by different scholars, but also a series of dreams, an anthology of attempts to communicate something real in language, a succession of illustrations which show why personal experience in relation to art, in relation to Shakespeare, matters. All the contributors to this volume share a sense of daring, a declaration that what they have seen and felt, combined with what they can rationally know and demonstrate, is important. All of the essays to a greater or lesser extent are about personal formation.”
Edmonson is right. “This kind of (self) reading has a long and distinguished tradition, and I think that part of its future will be its willingness and openness to absorb and engage with other forms of writing. I see a creative future for criticism, close-reading, and writing of this kind.” The personal resonates everything, the love and criticism of the Bard will always start with the personal.
This wraps up February, happy to move on or a tad reluctant to, March is fast-approaching, ushering in the sun. Hopefully, the voice of the Bard and his always-present lovers bring in more smiles and sunshine.
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