The Stage

Invidious Bard argument

Published Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 11:15

I have followed with increasing disbelief the contributions to your letters page professing to be from Shakespearean scholars with regards to multi-racial casts, one anonymous (March 27, page 8), the other by Chris Knight (April 4, page 8).

Their ire comes down to the notion that black and Asian actors should be excluded from Shakespeare on the basis that “the play’s author did not write the character parts for a black/Asian person”. It’s an invidious argument for several reasons. Firstly this logic would exclude black and Asian actors from Shakespeare’s most celebrated black part, given that Othello was written for Richard Burbage and not performed by a black actor until more than 200 years after Shakespeare’s death. Secondly, for consistency, our self-proclaimed academic would need to be as angry about women now playing Shakespeare’s female characters, given they were written to be played by men. It’s interesting to note that this aspect of their cry for historical accuracy doesn’t seem to concern him in the slightest.

The most charitable interpretation of their views is that they have everything to do with treating plays as stale historical documents and nothing at all to do with living theatre, which is so much more than the fusty museum piece they clearly crave. But frankly, if you’re the sort of person who can watch the three parts of Henry VI at the Roundhouse with Chuk Iwuji as the King and all that goes through your head is “but Henry VI wasn’t black”, then the problem doesn’t lie in the casting. The problem lies in your lack of decency, humanity, or at the very least the one thing live theatre demands from its audience - imagination.

So why should Michael Boyd, the RSC and theatre in general continue to “put black/ethnic actors in parts which Shakespeare did not intend to be played by other than white Europeans”? Well, to do its bit to drag you bigots out of the swamp, that’s why.

Richard Hollis

Fallsbrook Road

London

SW16