This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance, Then and Now (review)

This latest study from a master Shakespearean begins with a sketch of what might be taken for an exceptionally imposing straw man. David Bevington addresses a readership for whom the plays are primarily the work of "a great poet, a profound thinker, and a perceptive observer of the human condition"; to whom "the theater is a strange and unfamiliar place" (1); with whom, presumably, the multiplying performance histories of publishers' catalogues and modern editions have yet to register. The aim, however, of This Wide and Universal Theater is not to rehearse the homage others have paid to the annals of theatrical tradition from then to now. Its concern is then and now. It is axiomatic that Shakespeare wrote for very particular playing spaces, an understanding of which strengthens our grip on his plots, scenes, dialogue, and words, and Bevington is unusually well equipped to bring such understanding to the analysis of modern productions. Cue a fundamentalist or—worse—antiquarian style of theater criticism? Certainly not. Here, television and cinema, as much as live performance, "can arise out of, and contribute to, changed perceptions of the text" (2); the result is a book as generous in scope and spirit as its title promises.

Readers persuaded by W. B. Worthen's 1997 Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance will, it is true, find much to argue with. Performance histories founded on the premise of "then to now" chart a dialogue of consolidation and innovation between those whose primary allegiance is to live interaction with audiences: actors, directors, and designers. By contrast, the exchange between "then and now" instates as chief interlocutor the (allegedly) more restrictive, academic domain of the printed text, and with it loyalty to that seasoned historiography whereby the bare-board puritanism of William Poel rescued a performance tradition groaning beneath the weight of two hundred years of "representational" practice. True, the productions of Garrick, Irving, and Tree had "a remarkable grandeur of [their] own" which should not be treated "condescendingly," but a sine qua non of this study is that the moderns, through rediscovery of the presentational style, are "closer to the spirit of the original" (5). When Poel is so canonized it is customary to observe that he was helped by the invention of cinema—no longer would theater managers mount Shakespearean scenic spectaculars, once movie directors could do it better. But one of the charms of This Wide and Universal Theater is to show how "the spirit of the original" can inform screen and stage alike. Metonymy and self-reference pay dividends, whatever the medium; they are the means by which any audience can participate in that key Shakespearean experience, the collective "creation of illusion" (10). In Bevington's account of stages, movies, television versions, and operas, there is nothing inherently conservative or prescriptive in the way the properties of the text—however bent to the contours of Renaissance playhouses—inform that wondrous, enabling, creative process.

It follows that the plays and performances Bevington writes about best are those where consciousness of medium runs deepest, from the raw framing of The Taming of the Shrew to the inflected shadows of The Tempest. Full value is given to the theatricality of such enigmas as Duke Vincentio and to whatever in Shakespearean cinema looks allusive or self-referential. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet evades indulgence in its scenic realism because it is "metacinematically aware of its upbeat MTV style" (138); Hamlet, already a "critical defense of theater," thrives when allowed to speak not so much for as of itself (142). The canon of performances that emerges includes many old favorites but remains obstinately unlike that of any comparable study, for the effect of Bevington's approach is to displace two significant components of performance history, one as old as the very idea of such history, the other more recent.

Although many actors are mentioned by name—perhaps rather too many—there...