Shakespeare As You Like It: Peter
Holland’s View of The Bard’s Life and Works
PETER HOLLAND
Considered by many to be the greatest writer in the English
language, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English
playwright and poet. His plays, Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and
Juliet, King Lear, and Midsummer Night’s Dream
among others, have been performed in many languages around the
world.
Peter Holland is McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare
Studies at the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at
University of Notre Dame. The author of numerous works about
Shakespeare, he is also editor of Shakespeare Survey,
general editor (With Stanley Wells) of the Oxford Shakespeare
Topics series, series editor of Redefining British
Theatre History, and general editor (with Adrian Poole) of
Great Shakespeareans.
Q: To this day William Shakespeare is widely regarded
as the greatest writer in the English language. What, in your
view, makes him the "greatest?"
A: The brilliance of turning narrative into drama, the
astonishing nature of his ability to create characters on stage,
the depth of possibility in his language and the ways in which
his plays mean so many different things in such different
cultures across the world and across time.
Q: What is your view of the “authorship debate,” which
brings forth the idea that maybe some (or perhaps even all) of
the plays that have been attributed to the Bard were actually
written by someone else?
A: There is no convincing evidence whatsoever that anyone
other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays.
Q: In the context of the Elizabethan era and the
prevailing mores of that time period, were his plays considered
mainstream or avant-garde?
A: The words “mainstream” and “avant-garde” don’t mean
anything for the early modern period. But Shakespeare was a great
innovator and changed the ways plays could be written.
Q: Did Shakespeare act in any of his own
plays?
A: So early gossip said and there is some evidence, for
example his being listed as an actor in plays by his contemporary
Ben Jonson, that he did act. But, given that the traditional
high-point of his acting career was said to have been the small
role of Adam in As You Like It, it doesn’t suggest that
he was much good!
Q: Was he influenced by any other
authors?
A: Of course. He was profoundly influenced by, for instance,
Marlowe as a playwright and by his favorite classical writers
like Ovid, Plutarch and Apuleius.
Q: The majority of Shakespeare’s plays were published
after his death. Why did he not publish them in his
lifetime?
A. Half of his plays were published in his life-time, some in
many editions; the other half were included, after his death, in
the collection of his work that his colleagues, Heminges and
Condell, put together. Plays did not belong to the playwrights
but to the companies who bought them. So he didn’t ever publish
any of his plays; the King’s Men did. Remember that most plays
written in the period were never published; publication was less
important than performance.
Q: What is the importance of the First Folio,
containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays?
A: Obviously, without the First Folio we may never have been
able to read half of his work, plays like Macbeth and
Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest and
Coriolanus. I see it, along with the King James Bible,
as the most important book of the English Renaissance.
Q: His play, Cardenio, was performed in his
life but has since been lost. What do we know about it, and is
there any way of recreating it?
A: No, there is no way to “recreate” it. We know it was based
on some material in Cervantes but not any details of its turn
from narrative to drama. Lewis Theobald in the early 18th century
published a play, The Double Falsehood, which may have
been based on the play Shakespeare co-wrote with his younger
contemporary John Fletcher. Of course, as with the new production
of a play by Charles Mee and Stephen Greenblatt, one can always
write a play using some of the same materials Shakespeare
used.
Q: In the last few years many critics have begun to
reassess a play called Edward III, currently grouped
with a collection of 11 other plays known as the Shakespeare
Apocrypha. Another play, Sir Thomas More has also been
examined. Handwriting analysis has led scholars to believe that
Shakespeare revised parts of Sir Thomas More, but, like
Edward III, it is not part of the standard collection of
Shakespeare’s plays. What is your view?
A: I have no doubt that Shakespeare was Hand D, as the
handwriting is called, one of the authors of Sir Thomas
More, contributing the wonderful scene of the May Day riot,
and equally no doubt that he wrote the Countess of Shrewsbury
scenes in Edward III. There are other scenes, like a
scene in the anonymous play Arden of Faversham, which
may well be by Shakespeare. And, of course, there are plenty of
plays in the First Folio that are collaborations:
Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Henry VI Part
1, Henry VIII, Titus Andronicus.
Q: Was the language he used in his works actually the
spoken language of his time, or was it only the literary /
theatrical language?
A: It’s both. This was a time when English was coining words
at an astonishing rate; some may be Shakespeare’s coinages,
others not. Lacking direct evidence we can only guess what the
spoken language of the time was like but when Cordelia says to
King Lear ‘No cause, no cause’ or Hamlet says ‘To be or not to
be; that is the question’, they sound as if they are speaking a
very ordinary language in very remarkable ways.
Q: How does a teacher / professor motivate today’s
students to read Shakespeare?
A: By showing them that the plays are fun, engaging, exciting,
powerful, thoughtful, exhilarating works. Without engaging
students in performance there is no point in trying to encourage
them to read.
