Finding the 'new' in Shakespeare

That's the question posed on the provocative flyer— the one handed out at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon last week after a particularly bloody performance of "The Scottish Play." The promise of something "new" and unknown in a theater devoted to a four -centuries-old dramatic oeuvre? A tantalizing notion….

Under Michael Boyd's bold artistic direction, the Royal Shakespeare Company is finding the "new" in Shakespeare in a variety of compelling, captivating ways, as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary season. And if you think you've seen it all when it comes to The Bard, you'll have many surprises in store.

First, there's Dunsinane, a new play by David Greig that, according to the teaser mentioned above, promises to be a sequel to Macbeth, playing now through July 2 on one of the Royal Shakespeare's three mainstages in Shakespeare's home town. Greig is only one of 30 writers currently under commission as part of the company's innovative new play program"“ an impressive new initiative, given that this is a theater dedicated to the classics.

Then there's the company's provocative new production of Macbeth itself, brimming with bold innovations under Boyd's imaginative direction. There are the three lugubrious-looking cellists perched high over the cavernous stage, who underscore the dark deeds of the play with appropriately chilling music. There are the three witches, played by little children, who soar down from the flies chanting, "Double double toil and trouble" in midair, like nightmarish Peter Pans.

There are two back-to-back versions of the macabre banquet scene where Banquo appears as a ghost"“ one a violent fantasy, one a chilling reality, dramatizing Macbeth's descent into delusional paranoia. Dead bodies drop on the stage, only to rise again and flit away— a harbinger that "blood will (indeed) have blood."

Stoppard's three basic elements

Above all, this is a Macbeth that provides both the poetry and the lurid chills and thrills offered by the script, making it the most exciting of the four different productions I've seen this season. Boyd's blood-soaked, black-magic, ghost-infested Macbeth calls to mind Tom Stoppard's truism about the three compulsory requirements of compelling theater: blood, love and rhetoric.

("I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive," says a Stoppardian character, "but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory"“ they're all blood, you see.")

What else is new this season at the Royal Shakespeare? The theater itself. For its 50th anniversary season, the company has just reopened its magnificently renovated mainstage and adjacent Swan Theatres, after a two-year, $170 million transformation. Each space is three-quarters in the round, with several wooden balconies, in keeping with the Elizabethan structural style.

The bare stage invites both traditional and innovative staging, and the sight lines from any place in the house are superb. Together with the Courtyard Theatre just down the road, this dazzling complex now attracts a half-million audience members through its mainstage, school and international touring programs.

A "'new' play by Shakespeare

As if this weren't enough, the Royal Shakespeare has come up with something really new for it's 50th anniversary: A new play by Shakespeare himself…allegedly. It's called Cardenio, subtitled "Shakespeare's "Lost Play' Reimagined." Its journey from oblivion to rediscovery to the stage today reads like combination of a detective thriller and a literary excavation— as impressive a collaborative effort as the restoration of the Royal Shakespeare complex itself.

The origins of Cardenio, based on the company's scholarly research, go something like this (with several unexplained gaps):

In 1612, a new translation of Cervantes's novel Don Quixote caught the fancy of two well-known playwrights of the day, Will Shakespeare and John Fletcher. They decided to collaborate and dramatize the novel's "Cardenio episode." Their play was performed twice in Court in 1613; then Shakespeare died in 1616, and Fletcher in 1625. Meanwhile, when the first Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623, Cardenna/Cardenno was not among them. The play disappeared for the rest of the 17th Century.

In the 18th Century, however, the play resurfaced"“ this time as Double Falshood [sic] by a writer named Lewis Theobald, who claimed that his play was based on Shakespeare's lost original. Double Falshood received ten performances at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1727. Two editions were subsequently published in 1728, and the play was revived numerous times throughout that century (although it wasn't included in newer editions of Shakespeare's works).

In 1808, however, a fire in Covent Garden Theatre destroyed the archive containing Double Falshood. The trail runs cold after that, until 1920, when an alleged edition of Double Falsehood (now spelled correctly) resurfaced again.

Working backwards

This rediscovery instigated an ongoing scholarly debate (Was it a forgery? Was Shakespeare really involved?)"“ one that lasted until just last year, when an edition of Double Falsehood was finally published in the Arden Shakespeare Series.

Right on cue, enter Royal Shakespeare associate director Gregory Doran, who dreamed of reconstructing Shakespeare and Fletcher's creative process by, essentially, working backwards. Doran has adapted Double Falsehood and supplemented it with material from the seminal Cardenio story commissioned from Spanish translators and scholars, in an effort to reimagine what might have been the original work. On April 14, 2011, the first performance of Cardenio reimagined the original long-lost Shakespeare/Fletcher text that hadn't been performed since 1613.

A great literary escapade, isn't it? But was the effort worthwhile?

This sounds familiar

In my opinion, it's a delight, in a variety of aspects. It's immensely entertaining, featuring the same, distinctive plot elements of many of the Shakespearean comedies. There are the contrasting court and pastoral settings (complete with shepherds, as in As You Like It). There are the double sets of young lovers (Cardenio/Luscinda and Fernando/Dorothea), whose alliances are scrambled and then unscrambled again (as in Midsummer Night's Dream).

There are the intrigues and hidden identities, with girls dressed as boys (as in Twelfth Night). There is the noble, self-sacrificing damsel who demands the same high standards of her beloved (as in Measure for Measure). There is the melodrama of thwarted nuptials (as in Much Ado About Nothing), and so on. Moreover, the play's exotic Spanish setting makes the play unique in the canon of Shakespearean comedies.

Don't expect the celestial poetry of The Bard's other comedies. But do expect enchantment"“ from the lively story, the wit and charm of the characters, the colorful mis-en-scène, and the flamboyant festive finale of Spanish dance involving the entire ensemble. And do expect that unique feeling of fulfillment from the harmony that Shakespearean comedy offers, when all the planets (love, loyalty, fidelity, filial devotion) align in the end.

Let's hope the Philadelphians at the Arden or People's Light & Theatre"“ or any other theatre whose audiences love Shakespeare"“ will jump on the bandwagon of theater history and conjure up the ghost of this long-lost manuscript too, in one form or another.