Richard J. Larschan

Book review: Hamlet Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One PlayDromgooleDominic, Hamlet Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play (New York, Grove Press, 2017), 390 pp., ISBN 9780802125620,

consists in seeing the play’s setting as ‘a real place that Shakespeare authenticates by way of accurate historical and geographical details’ (141), the latter views the setting as ‘a conveniently distant and exotic locale that allows the author to comment about his own time and place – London – without running the risk of censorship or slander’ (141). It is worth noting that Bassi underlines a difference between Venice and Verona as regards the way each city deals with Shakespeare. Verona has become a touristy spot because of Juliet’s alleged balcony; in contrast, ‘Shakespeare is almost invisible in Venice’ (143). Bassi provides a convincing explanation to understand this difference between Venice and Verona. He adopts the approach of an art historian in Chapter 9, ‘Fixed figures: The other Moors of Venice’. In this chapter, Bassi analyses how the figure of the Moor was fixed and even fixated within Venice’s very walls by mentioning some artworks that evoke Othello more or less implicitly. In the final chapter, Bassi discusses Caesar Must Die (2012), an adaptation of Julius Caesar by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. It was performed in the maximum security prison of Rebibbia in Rome by inmates under the direction of Fabio Cavalli. Bassi interprets this performance as a political allegory revealing ‘a country still grappling with its own identity, especially the relationship with public institutions and the question of civic values and virtues’ (199). He makes explicit the link between the adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, the setting chosen by the director and the inmates performing in this production – claiming that the place chosen, a prison, is ‘a site of consciousness in the country’s political and cultural history’ (184). In a nutshell, Bassi’s book deals with Italian cultural politics, political philosophy and critical theories related to Shakespeare. It emphasizes the way Shakespeare has been read and misread, used and abused by Italian political regimes, stage or film directors, critics and academics – to the extent that Shakespeare is now part and parcel of the Italian political unconscious.

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among other things to be predicated on the claim that at the moment of the writing of Hamlet, there was a peculiarly heightened political awareness in England which the play both reflects and inflects. It never becomes clear whether this claim applies to playgoers, London playgoers, the nation’s elite or just people in general round about 1601. The plausibility or implausibility of such a claim is indeed hard to calibrate. Are we to think that people experienced a heightened political consciousness around the turn of the century, and read (or more usually saw) Hamlet through that prism, as distinct from Elizabethans at, say, the time of the Bond of Association? Or Jacobeans at, say, the time of the Spanish Match, especially those who, to the Spanish ambassador’s intense irritation, flocked to see A Game at Chesse? How would any historian of culture demonstrate this? In the final analysis, and as is often the case, one is stimulated by discrete points made shrewdly here and there, in sentences, paragraphs, sometimes successive pages throughout Hamlet’s Moment, without ever having one’s conviction carried by the bold claims made in Kiséry’s introduction. Hamlet’s Moment is far more text-oriented than performance-oriented, but the textual source base is decidedly narrow to support such an overarching theoretical superstructure. A provocative monograph from which one learns much, then – one which, for all the strenuousness of its exposition, does not enlist this reader’s assent as to its larger ambitions.

Book review: Lord Rochester in the Restoration WorldAugustineMatthew C.ZwickerSteven N. (eds), Lord Rochester in the Restoration World (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), v+293pp., ISBN 9781107064393, US

Lucianus the poisoner in a red leather devil mask. Throughout the scene, the visiting troupe also somehow manage to serve as musicians, playing flutes and recorders; shortly thereafter, Hamlet accuses the same actors, now Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of trying to play him like a pipe. The production ends with its real ending having been displaced to the beginning: Hamlet’s final line intoning that the rest is silence is turned into a kind of prologue uttered at the play’s opening while the actors assemble en masse in the choir. With the sole illumination coming from candles on the altar behind them, Horatio is left with just Hamlet’s request to tell his story – as the church bell tolls and the candles flicker out, the rest is darkness.

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Kaara L Peterson is an associate professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. She has authored a co-edited volume (with Deanne Williams), The Afterlife of Ophelia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare’s England (Ashgate, 2010). Her other work has appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies and Mosaic and in collected volumes.

Play review: The TempestThe Tempest, directed by BurrowsAllyn for the Trinity Repertory Company, Willet Hall at United Parish, Brookline, Massachusetts, 18122016, centre stalls D 1 (Plates 7a and 7b).

of revenge against those he loves most, and the pleasure of his new freedom is drunken brawling with courtiers who are now his mates. However, Hicks’s natural physical elegance, a striking contribution to the success of this production, suggests that a man may have potential beyond his historically constructed public persona. Later, as Lear lurches in and out of madness and grief, Hicks’s graceful strength suggests beauty even in the tragedy of an old man reduced to nakedness. Similarly in Act IV Scene 7, his long white body and the wild meadow flowers that crown his ludic Lear evoke the stillness of sculpture even in the middle of frantic movement. There is a similar quality of underlying quietness in Hicks’s delivery of some of Lear’s most desperate words. He frequently diminishes the sound and fury (“Howl, howl, howl” [V.3.258] and “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” [III.2.1] are almost whispered), choosing instead to emphasise Lear’s personal insights. One of many instances occurs after Goneril and Regan join forces to reject him. He turns abruptly away from them as if looking for another audience and loudly proclaims like a king, “I will do such things” — only to look helplessly around before mumbling to himself, “What they are yet I know not, but they shall be / The terrors of the earth!” (II.4.280-82). His sudden recognition of the scale of his helplessness is shocking. Arguably, King Lear can stand or fall on the central performance, but this production is truly an ensemble achievement. Two sets of juxtaposed performances in particular stand out. The first is the Duke of Kent (Darrell D’Silva) and Earl of Gloucester (Geoffrey Freshwater). D’Silva’s Kent energetically exemplifies the fearlessness and loyalty of a man who is no thinker but who, as the first signs of crisis show themselves, senses his importance to the king as a truth-teller. His strong, muscular figure seems anchored to the earth and is a fitting expression of his moral directness. At the end of the play, spiritual exhaustion drains his voice as he asks, “Is this the promised end?” (V.3.263). His medieval-style roughness is ably complemented by Freshwater’s equivocating Edwardian Gloucester, whose loyalty to the king and conscience are initially compromised by his comfortable and self-regarding affluence. He sucKing Lear, directed by David Farr for the RSC, The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 4 March 2010, left-centre stalls. [See photos, 55]