20. Not Another Shakespeare Podcast on their mission to humanise early modern drama

Hosts of the popular podcast Not Another Shakespeare Podcast, James and Nora, speak to Anjna about their mission to humanise early modern drama, making it fun (and sometimes silly) for their audiences. They also have an incredible film recommendation.

Transcript

Anjna (00:00):

Welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Anjna (00:15):

Hello, welcome to Shakespeare alive. My name's Anjna Chouhan. My guests for this episode are the hosts of Not Another Shakespeare podcast, James and Nora. So, Nora is lecturer in Shakespeare and early modern drama and literature at the University of Essex. Her first book, Canonical Misogyny, is currently under contract with Edinburgh University Press. And her husband, James, is a chartered surveyor by day. Now, Not Another Shakespeare podcast began during lockdown in winter 2020 and has now two full seasons. Now, in each episode, Nora introduces James to an early modern play and he gets to respond often, very, very amusingly, and they assure me that season three is on its way. James and Nora, what a pleasure to have you with us on Shakespeare Alive. Welcome to the show.

James (01:07):

Thank you.

Nora (01:08):

Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Anjna (01:10):

It really is a pleasure and we always start our episodes by asking our guests. What your route to Shakespeare was? So, James, do you want to start with your route to Shakespeare?

James (01:21):

Mine is a lot more conventional, I'd say. So, I was taught Shakespeare at school, had a fairly kind of, I guess, neutral opinion. I think, probably, just because of the age I was and the way that I kind of liked to find things on my own, rather than kind of be sort of taught things with marks. So, after that, I sort of sporadically would've seen films or things or plays on TV for instance, but it was really Nora that really kind of brought Shakespeare back to me.

Anjna (02:02):

So, Nora, you obviously woke James up, if you like, to the joys or Shakespeare. But what was your route to Shakespeare, then?

Nora (02:11):

If my ninth grade English teacher, Larry Desautels, listens to this, he will find it hilarious because I told him after taking English class with him and we read Julius Caesar, I said, "I hate Shakespeare. I don't understand it. It's awful. I don't get it. I'm never doing any Shakespeare again." But I also was a theater kid and my school, in the states, it's very common for secondary schools to do a musical every year. My school didn't do a musical, they did a Shakespeare play and I thought, well, I'm not going to get to do any theater this term if I don't audition for the Shakespeare. And it was through performing it that I found that actually I could understand it. And I had a developed a real kind of passion for it over my secondary school years in my university years. And when James and I met, I was doing a Master's in staging Shakespeare.

Anjna (03:03):

And now, obviously, you're a lecturer, Nora.

Nora (03:06):

Yes.

Anjna (03:07):

So, you're at the University of Essex.

Nora (03:09):

That's right. So, I can't get away from him now.

Anjna (03:14):

And you focus on early modern theater and indeed Shakespeare too, don't you?

Nora (03:18):

I do. So, my passion for Shakespeare, I would say, has cooled somewhat since I was 17 and had a pair of jeans with a hole in them that my parents wouldn't let me wear anymore. So, I sharpied Shakespeare speeches all over that and wore them.

James (03:34):

I didn't know about this.

Nora (03:34):

Oh yeah.

Anjna (03:35):

Do you still possess that jeans?

Nora (03:37):

No. I really wish that I did. I really wish I did, I don't know what happened to them. Somewhere in the last mumble mumble years, they disappeared. But, that was the peak, I think, of Shakespeare passion. And then, I think, sort of towards the end of university, when started my masters, I was reading a lot more Jacobean tragedy and plays by other playwrights from the same period. And I found that, actually, those plays really excited me in ways that I didn't know it was possible to be excited.

Nora (04:11):

And so, my PhD was actually about The Changeling, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. And I, now, although of course, Shakespeare is my bread and butter and he pays the bills mostly, I do kind of have a real desire to sort of introduce people to these other playwrights and to make sure... So, one of my modules that I teach at Essex is a third year module called Representing Women on 17th century English stages. And there's no Shakespeare at all on that module. It's all other playwrights and other sorts of performance, which I'm quite proud of.

Anjna (04:43):

Sure. And I mean, this focus on women that you have, that's part of your work as well, isn't it? Have you published on women, too?

Nora (04:52):

Yes. So, I'm writing a book right now, which is under contract with Edinburgh University press. It's coming out, hopefully, in 2025 called Canonical Misogyny: Dramaturgies of Sexual Violence in Shakespeare and in Early Modern Drama. So, I actually just had an article published today, actually, out of the book project, which is exciting, basically, arguing that misogyny is a systemic problem, not just in Shakespeare's time, but in our own time and indeed both before him and probably after us. And so, if you want to think about misogyny in Shakespeare, you have to be thinking about dramaturgy because dramaturgy is the word we use for the kind of systems of the play, if you like the kind of structure of it, the way it's put together, the assumptions that it makes the world that it creates. And so, casting a woman as Petruchio, for example, doesn't quite do that dramaturgical work where you're sort of asking casting to do the work of dramaturgy, when actually, you need to get deeper into the play to really address that.

Anjna (05:55):

And you mentioned that you wanted to sort of be able to talk to people more meaningfully, and presumably, this gave birth to your idea of your podcast. So, you started Not Another Shakespeare podcast in the lockdown. So, tell us what the kind of thinking behind it was and where it came from.

James (06:16):

Well, I think, I'd sort of got into podcasts during lockdown, like a lot of people. And I'd been thinking... Because I'm a music producer in my kind of hobby spare time. And I thought, I've got the skills to record and edit, it'd be fun to do a podcast. And I was sort of thinking of ideas, mostly kind of music related, but I didn't really have anything that I thought would stick out enough or anything that was really working. And then, one day, we were just talking and Nora was explaining...

Nora (06:50):

I was preparing a lecture, I think.

James (06:51):

Yeah.

Nora (06:52):

I was prepping a lecture on The Merry Wives of Windsor and James is often my test audience.

James (06:58):

Yeah.

Nora (06:59):

For lecture subjects. Because I think if I can keep James interested, then I can surely keep undergrads interested. And he taught me something in that exchange.

James (07:13):

Oh...

Nora (07:13):

You did. Because the play is called The Merry Wives of Windsor are plural. And I got to the end of explaining the plot point that I needed him to understand this piece of the lecture. And he stopped me and he is like, Wait. There's only two wives?

James (07:30):

Yeah.

Nora (07:32):

And he was really shocked to find out.

James (07:33):

I was pretty shocked.

Nora (07:35):

Yeah. I believe, he said, "Shakespeare's crimping on the wives."

James (07:38):

Yeah. Well, I was expecting a bunch of wives.

Nora (07:39):

He was expecting because the title of the play is wives, plural.

James (07:44):

Multiple wives.

Nora (07:46):

And to be fair, by the end, it's three, but still...

James (07:51):

Still la lot of wives.

Anjna (07:52):

Not meeting James's minimal requirements.

James (07:58):

No. I think it's one of those plays I'd like heard the name of, and in my head, not knowing anything about it, I just thought, oh, there'd be a lot of wives in that one.

Nora (08:05):

You'd think that you would think that from the title. And I think I was, I'm just so deep in Shakespeare that it had never occurred to me that the title was misleading. So, I tweeted this thing that he had said, and within an hour. We had like a few hundred likes on it, which is more than I would normally see on one of my tweets. And I think, it was you, I think it was James that said, "Oh, like we could do a Shakespeare podcast. That's sort of, that's just this..." Because we had been talking that whole hour and sort of joking about it. And we were sort of still on topic with The Merry Wives of Windsor.

James (08:41):

Yeah.

Nora (08:43):

And we thought, well, why not? We've got nothing else to do. It's lockdown.

James (08:47):

Yeah.

Nora (08:47):

And even if we're just entertaining ourselves with this, it would be something to do. And if people want to listen to it, then great. We feel shocked that people actually want to listen to it.

Anjna (09:02):

Well, it is a wonderful podcast that you have guys and it's lovely because what happens is take your audience through a play at a time and usually in a couple of parts and you sort of tell the story, Nora, and then James, you kind of, you react to it. And it's like a process of discovery, not just for you, but also for your listeners. Can I ask, are you genuinely ignorant about the plays? Are these sincere reactions or do you know a little bit in depth?

James (09:35):

Yeah. They are sincere. There's one or two I know, in advance. So, Macbeth I did at school, and I think, I'm hard pressed to find people who don't know a little about it. For measure... We've...

Nora (09:53):

We've seen a few Changelings...

James (09:55):

The changeling I've seen, but most of them, I don't know. Most of it, something like Cymbeline, no idea. So...

Anjna (10:03):

Very few people do, James. You're not...

Nora (10:06):

Even Shakespeare people.

Anjna (10:10):

Yeah. Has James' reaction ever really taken you by surprise?

Nora (10:15):

Yeah. Probably once an episode, at least. Because I love... This is one of the things that I've always, since I met James, have loved about James, is that his brain is not always on a linear path and in a wonderful and creative and intelligent and sometimes hilarious way.

Nora (10:35):

But so when we did As You Like It, for example, we had two whole, it was a double episode. We had been recording for, I think, like three and a half hours or something of As You Like It. And we get to the end of As You Like It. And I said to James, like, oh, what was your favorite bit? And he just goes, I liked the wrestling, which if you don't know, As You Like It, is the very first thing that... Where you haven't liked...

James (11:00):

And the lion.

Nora (11:01):

He likes the lion, he likes it. He likes animal characters. He likes the bear from the Winter's Tale. And he has a real sympathy for characters who don't really get enough time in the sun. And I've learned that if I skip over a minor character and James later finds out that I've left them out, I get in trouble.

James (11:20):

There's always, if you have say to me, if you've got any questions at the end, I'll be like, oh yeah, what happened to old Adam or whatever?

Anjna (11:28):

hat's a very good question, in fact.

Nora (11:31):

We're done to old Adam. We don't know.

Anjna (11:33):

Well quite, and actually speaking of As You Like It, I remember, you got quite fixated James on the character of Hymen.

Nora (11:41):

Yeah. James also has a very inappropriate mind, shall we say. As many men of his age. And so, there's always like Hymen was a big one. When we did Cymbeline, he thought love token meant like a coupon for sex acts. So, when they were exchanging love tokens, he really thought that they were like promising each other sex at a later date. I guess, like metaphorically they sort of are, but that's not what it is.

James (12:17):

That's not what I expected.

Anjna (12:21):

So, has there been anything, James, in this sort of process of discovering these plays, that has taken you by surprise or something that you just weren't expecting at all?

James (12:32):

I think, Cymbeline, in general, and just how kind of crazy some of the plays are and things that happen. And I think, certainly, or even sometimes how rude they are. I'm often dragging it into the gutter, but sometimes, it's already there. And certainly, growing up, it sort of taught us. It's very civilized and elegant. And it is certainly, in terms of the language like the construction, but sometimes the subject matter of things is as crude as the things I'm bringing to the table.

Anjna (13:12):

So, just how naughty Shakespeare is.

James (13:14):

Yeah.

Anjna (13:16):

I think that's a fun thing to discover and it's so important to just send out there to audiences as a message, particularly, if you are new to Shakespeare. But actually, this stuff isn't frightening or high brow at all. So, you don't just talk about Shakespeare, because you mentioned The Changeling a few minutes ago. So, how did you decide what other plays you're going to talk about?

Nora (13:40):

That's a good question. Well, I think The Changeling was on there because it was one I didn't really have to prep. Because I did my whole PhD on The Changeling. I spent four years living, breathing The Changeling. I can pretty much talk about that play in my sleep and probably have. And so, that one was an easy choice and I think we felt like we wanted to sort of stick a flag in the ground in the first season and say, we're not just doing Shakespeare because if we just did Shakespeare, we would actually run out of place pretty quickly. So, if we expand it, then we've got more to do. We wanted a Halloween episode for second season and we had already done Macbeth. So, The Witch of Edmonton was kind of my pitch for that. And I knew that James was just going to love a talking dog.

James (14:25):

I had actually seen that.

Nora (14:27):

You had, but you fell asleep.

James (14:28):

I mean, that's some of the things... I know I did fall asleep of the several plays that we've seen. But again, that's a fraction of all the plays that we are looking at.

Nora (14:41):

Yeah.

James (14:41):

But again, that one had a vague idea.

Nora (14:43):

Yes.

James (14:44):

That there was a witch... And a dog

Nora (14:44):

And a talking dog.

Anjna (14:48):

So, we like the talking dogs and we like the lions.

Nora (14:51):

Yes.

Anjna (14:52):

And we've got our Halloween episodes. So I know that you have one off, I guess it was special episodes and there's one, I think you've done a quiz one before, like you said, the Halloween one. Have you got birthday one or am I just making that up?

Nora (15:06):

Oh, Shakespeare birthday one. Wee haven't done a Shakespeare birthday one, partly I think,, because that's also our wedding anniversary, which was a total accident. We did not plan for that to be the case. People hear that and they're like, oh yeah, right. Shakespeare's birthday is your wedding, is like, no, actually, we genuinely just had to get married on that day because of our visa circumstances.

Anjna (15:31):

Oh my good, that's a great story.

Nora (15:33):

Yeah.

Anjna (15:35):

Have you got an episode that is like... What's your all time favorite?

James (15:39):

I like the Cymbeline episode.

Nora (15:43):

I like that one too. And I think The Witch of Edmonton is a good one.

James (15:45):

And the witch was a good one.

Nora (15:48):

Some of the guest episodes are quite good as well. I think the most recent one, which is two hours long...

James (15:54):

It's long.

Nora (15:55):

On A Chaste Maid in Cheapside...

James (15:57):

But it's funny.

Nora (15:57):

But we had, it's funny, and we had Brandi Adams on for that one, who is a book historian and has studied Latin extensively. So, all the Latin... There's a lot of Latin jokes in that play that certainly went over my head and James' head, but Brandy was able to like, she got them and so she could explain them to us. And so that was really, really good.

Anjna (16:19):

Oh, that's amazing. They always say, it's great if you had to have a joke explained to you.

Nora (16:27):

Yeah. And it's interesting with that one, because it would've originally been staged in an outdoor theater. So, I don't know how many people, even in the audience, originally, would've gotten those Latin jokes or whether the joke was maybe just that like the Latin is bad and you don't need to know any more than that. It's like working on multiple levels. I don't know. But...

Anjna (16:49):

This meta comedy, what was it about Cymbeline, in particular, James, that made you go, "I really love this whole thing. I love this episode."?

James (16:58):

I think, the play itself is quite wacky and it was just quite a silly episode. Maybe, I was in a particularly silly mood or...

Nora (17:09):

You were really tired that day. I remember you had pretty much no filter.

James (17:16):

It was just...

Nora (17:17):

That was also the first play that I actually prepped anything for though.

James (17:20):

Right.

Nora (17:21):

Because prior to that, we had been doing, either plays that I knew really well because I was teaching them or I was writing about them. I was teaching Cymbeline at the time. But I remember thinking that I've got no hope with this if I don't have a plan.

James (17:34):

Mm.

Nora (17:36):

Because the plot is very convoluted and, I think I say this on the episode if you listen to it, but it's one of those plays where like, things that seem like really minor details just become very important later on. So, I didn't want to lose track of anything and I didn't want to... I didn't want to have to backtrack and explain like, oh, this is important because he's going to steal Posthumus' clothes and be like... It just seemed like I needed a plan. And so, I think, because I had it planned out, the actual explaining the story was much more streamlined, which left a lot more space for the fun.

Anjna (18:13):

For the fun things. It's funny actually, because, Nora, you describe yourself as the less funny half of Not Another Shakespeare podcast. I mean, do you still think that's the case? I wouldn't say that's the case as a listener.

Nora (18:26):

Thank you. I appreciate that. But I really do think James is the draw of the podcast because I could like...

James (18:32):

You know things though.

Nora (18:33):

Yeah. But I know boring things. I can tell you the story of the play, but it would be so much less interesting if it wasn't for you sort of reacting like a normal human and talking about...

James (18:47):

Not always like a normal being.

Nora (18:49):

But without the stuff about the love token. So, your real advocacy for the lion to get his time on stage or any... That's what really makes it, I think is your reactions to stuff.

Anjna (19:02):

Yeah. I guess it humanizes these sort of pieces of literature that have become almost static, haven't they, in the way that they're spoken about.

Nora (19:10):

Yeah.

Anjna (19:11):

And it's nice to bring us a sort of levity to that conversation is wonderful. What do you hope your audiences take away from the podcast?

James (19:20):

I think that Shakespeare can be fun and that it, I think, when we were sort of starting to do it, I think one of our aims was to try and make Shakespeare more accessible in a way that's kind of silly. We're not trying to do some sort of high brow. You certainly could, but I'm dragging down. That kind of just trying to have kind of fun with it and make it accessible to people who may not necessarily have really kind of intense preexisting interest in Shakespeare, I guess.

Nora (19:54):

Yeah. I think for me... And I say this to my students a lot. My general approach to Shakespeare is that, I think, knowledge of Shakespeare and access to Shakespeare, knowing about Shakespeare opens a lot of doors for you as a person in the world. So, I want to sort of give my students and to give anyone who's listening to the podcast, who maybe doesn't have that shake to your knowledge, that access, while also sort of pillaring it at the same time and sort of saying like, we can acknowledge that this is something that opens doors for you and helps you move through the world. But we don't have to accept that the world is that way necessarily, and we can knock Shakespeare off the pedestal a little bit. And I hope, from the academics that listen to it, cause we do have a fair few people who are themselves, Shakespeare experts and Shakespeare enthusiasts who listen to it.

Nora (20:42):

I hope that they have the experience that I have of listening to how James reacts to the plays and having to rethink their approach to them. Having that moment of going, oh God. Yeah, I am so deep in this that I hadn't noticed that Mary Wives of Windsor is a sort of misleading title. Why not play around with it? Why not have some fun with it? Why not sort of critique what it's doing culturally? What does it mean when we take something that's 400 years old and we put it on stage without sort of changing anything about it? What is that doing in terms of activating the prejudices of that time? The logic of that time, the thinking of that time, there's a way, I think, and I'm arguing in my book that sort of limits our horizon in terms of what we imagine is acceptable or we imagine it's possible in the present. And so, I do think it's important to sort of be alive to those things and to not just take Shakespeare as sacred.

Anjna (21:37):

If our listeners want to find out more about Not Another Shakespeare podcast, where do you suggest they go?

Nora (21:43):

We are on Spotify and Apple podcasts and Google podcasts.

James (21:48):

Yeah.

Nora (21:48):

And...

James (21:49):

Basically, all of them.

Nora (21:50):

Anywhere, all of them. If you Google the title of the podcast, you will have many options before you. We don't have sort of concrete plans for season three yet, but we're sort of playing...

James (21:59):

Working...

Nora (21:59):

Playing around with a few different ideas, but there will be another bonus episode at some point this summer to complete our audience requested Middleton mini season. So, we had A Chaste Maid in Cheapside with Brandi, and we're going to have women who are women coming out at some point this summer.

Anjna (22:14):

You're also to be found on social media. You've got Twitter page and Instagram, too. So, our listeners can find you anywhere. And I do recommend that you listen.

Nora (22:23):

That's very kind of you.

Anjna (22:25):

We're just going to pause for a quick break.

Speaker 5 (22:28):

We really appreciate your support for Shakespeare Alive, and we'd love to hear from you about how you're enjoying our podcast. So, please complete our survey by visiting shakespeare.org.uk/future. You can also leave us a review on Apple podcasts or on your usual podcast platform. Why not join the conversation on social media by using #ShakespeareAlive. And we hope that you enjoy the rest of this episode. You're listening to Shakespeare Alive with me, Anjna, and I'm talking to hosts of Not Another Shakespeare podcast, James and Nora. If you could direct anything, both of you and your answers might be different, what would you choose to direct?

Nora (23:18):

So, I do direct actually. So, my background is in theater. And so, I still do theater. And part of The Book Project is a practices research project with Measure of Measure. So, that's the one that I've been working on the most lately. I would love to direct some of those Jacobean tragedies. I would love to do The Changeling, The White Devil, a 'Tis Pity. One of those would be really juicy and fun.

James (23:46):

I don't know what I would do.

Anjna (23:48):

And your work on Measure for Measure, Nora. It sounds so fascinating, and I think that there's so much to unpack and it aligns so neatly with the subject in which you have a specific interest in conceptualizations of misogyny.

Nora (24:02):

Yeah.

Anjna (24:02):

But I just think it's such a complex, intricately constructed play and it makes a hell of a lot more sense than Cymbeline.

Nora (24:10):

Yeah, that's true. It does. And I think, it makes a lot more sense when you... I think there are a lot of directors who really are desperate for it to be a comedy in the modern sense of comedy, when in fact, the conception of genre in Shakespeare's period is so different. It doesn't have to be a laugh a minute kind of thing in order for it to be a comedy. It ends with weddings and not deaths, and therefore, it's a comedy.

Nora (24:38):

So, I think, there are too few directors, I think, willing to sort of accept that nuance and allow it to be really complex as a play and not sort of either try to make it a tragedy or try and make it this like ruckus comedy and to actually sit somewhere in the middle and really allow that the kind of complex ethics of it to sort of play out.

Anjna (25:04):

I think that there isn't much of an appetite is there for things with an ethical or moral complexity at their heart. I think, in all genres of art at the moment, there's a real hesitance to kind of explore gray areas across or any particular subject, there alone immoral ones. And I think measure's a calculated difficulty in that respect.

Nora (25:30):

I think certainly mainstream theater is not as willing to go there, but my students really are. I love... Our current cohort of third years, shout out to them, from drama at Essex. They're really excellent. We worked on Measure for Measures together recently, and I think they were trying to... It was an adaptation that sort of allowed act five Isabella, if you will, to sort of retrace the story of the play and sort of reevaluate her decisions and think about, would she make the same choices again? And the ending was a real... We spent a lot of time discussing the ending and we ended up on something very ambiguous, but there was a draft where she murdered the duke and that desire for catharsis, I think, was really strong.

Nora (26:21):

And then once they had sort of run that as a rehearsal, everybody was sort of like, "Okay, now what?" We've killed the duke, but what does that mean for Vienna? What does that mean for Isabella? What does that mean for justice? It was like, okay... Augusto Boal, who's a theater practitioner and thinker from among many other things from Brazil, he says that catharsis is coercive. That feeling of, oh, everything's okay now in theater and in Aristotelian dramaturgy, particularly, is coercive in the sense that it prevents you from actually taking the actions of revolution. It lets you leave the theater feeling that things have been resolved, when in fact, they have not. I was really proud of these students cause they were very willing to be like, okay, that felt good for a second, but what now?

Anjna (27:17):

Oh, that's fascinating. Your students sound wonderful.

Nora (27:20):

They really are.

Anjna (27:22):

They're lucky that they have you to guide them through it as well, Nora, which is really exciting. As you know, with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, we have a large collection. We've got an archive, we've got museum, we've got a library. Was there anything within our collections that stood out to you?

James (27:38):

There was one I saw that I like to look at that was called Time to Play. And that was about... Or was it games and sports and things like that in Shakespeare's time.

Anjna (27:48):

Were there any games in particular that you thought, "Oh, that's I like the sound of that?"

James (27:53):

I think it was one called hoop. I can't remember it was called now hoop something.

Nora (27:57):

Did you write it down?

James (27:59):

I didn't write it down foolishly.

Anjna (28:01):

How about you, Nora? Was there anything in the collection that stood out to you?

Nora (28:04):

I have been lucky enough to spend some time in the archive and library as part of my research, and my favorite things are the costume drawings. I'm not a costume historian. I'm not a costume expert, but any time I get to sit with costume drawings from different shows over a period of time, that is one of my favorite things.

Anjna (28:31):

Were you able to look at some of those, the Middleton? Did we have anything Middleton?

Nora (28:35):

Yes. You do. So, there's a couple different productions of The Changeling. And actually speaking of costumes, there's one from 1978, which I'm not going to remember the name of the direction, just somebody famous. And the there's a scene where Beatrice-Joanna, who's the heroin of the story, is meeting with Alsemero, who's the guy that she wants to be marrying. And then, shortly afterwards she meets with De Flores, who she's sort of planning to conscript to kill the guy that she is supposed to be marrying.

Nora (29:12):

The costume design for this piece, for this production from 1978, was a dress that exposed her breasts. So, she's got this sort of shawl thing that does come off of the course of the scene. And I had to read the stage manager's notes quite a few times to be like, hang on a minute.

Nora (29:34):

It does what? So, it was very much part of the trend of interpreting that play at that point in time, which was to sort of hyper sexualize her. I think so as to avoid thinking of her as a victim of sexual violence, which she is. And certainly I think now that would be the mainstream reading of that play. But at the time the seventies and eighties, particularly there was a really strong strand in the scholarship that really just wanted it to be her fault somehow. And so, she was really over sexualized in a lot of productions around that time. But that was probably the most surprising costume note that I ever seen.

Anjna (30:17):

Is there anything that you would want to bequeath to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to tell the story of Shakespeare in the 21st century to future generations?

James (30:28):

So, I was thinking of the last time I was in Stratford, and we've been there probably two or three times, and there's always something that we walk past that always kind of catches my eye and it's this large stuffed Teddy bear in a rough and that kind of Shakespearean outfit. Life size or even bigger.

Anjna (30:48):

Bear sized.

James (30:49):

Bear sized. So, that would be what I would pick.

Anjna (30:55):

Is there something about it that represents something of the now for you, James, that you think encompasses everything about Shakespeare in the 21st century?

James (31:05):

I think just the fact that it exists is a thing. That there is a demand to have a large stuffed Teddy bear Shakespeare.

Anjna (31:17):

I mean, it speaks a lot about the commercialization of Shakespeare as well, and the fact that he has, and certainly, Stratford become commodified in a way. And he's literally a tourist attraction.

James (31:27):

Yeah.

Anjna (31:28):

And so, within this bear, it's very cute and cuddly and has a rough, and also has this sort of surreal attraction to people across the world, representing something that was certainly once upon a time, very high brow. And I suppose, it is quite a sort of subversive object in and of itself. Before we go, do you have a favorite film adaptation of Shakespeare?

Nora (31:55):

So, I really like a lot of them, but I really like Feng Xiao Gang's adaptation of Hamlet, The Banquet, which is very focused on Gertrude. So, predictably, I like the one that's about the woman. It kind of takes... It sort of meshes the Gertrude and Ophelia characters together a little bit and focuses on her as this woman who is sort of clawing for power in order to survive in a very difficult set of circumstances. But of course it comes back to sort of bite her at the end. Or sometimes also in English, under the name of the Black Scorpion. So, you might find it either way.

Anjna (32:34):

Well, I don't know that one and I can't wait to watch it. Listeners, let us know if you've seen it or that you're going to look it out. Because that sounds right up my alley. How about for you, James? What's your favorite?

James (32:45):

So, I probably would've also said The Banquet, but instead, I'm going to go for, for two answers, one which is more high brown, one more low brown,

Anjna (32:51):

All right.

James (32:52):

High brown will be Throne of Blood and then low brown answer would be Lion King.

Anjna (32:57):

Well, thank you both so much for being fantastic guests on Shakespeare Alive. It's been such a pleasure to have you, and we wish you all the very best with Not Another Shakespeare podcast. And I can't wait for series three.

Speaker 5 (33:12):

Thank you for listening to this episode of Shakespeare Alive. Please join Paul next week when he speaks to actress, director, teacher, and scholar, Lisa Wolpe. If you'd like to find out more about the houses, collections, research and education activity at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, then please head over to our website, Shakespeare.org.uk