Book contents
- Shakespeare at War
- Shakespeare at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 ‘The Truth for Which We Are Fighting’
- Chapter 2 The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and Garrick’s Shakespearean Nationalism
- Chapter 3 Revolutionary Shakespeare
- Chapter 4 Hamlet Mobilized
- Chapter 5 Shakespeare, the North-West Passage, and the Russian War
- Chapter 6 ‘Now for Our Irish Wars’
- Chapter 7 Shakespeare and the Survival of Middle England
- Chapter 8 Ellen Terry Stars at the Shakespeare Hut
- Chapter 9 The 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary at № 1 Camp in Calais
- Chapter 10 Shakespeare Does His Bit for the War Effort
- Chapter 11 Germanizing Shakespeare during the First World War
- Chapter 12 Readers and Rebels
- Chapter 13 Forgotten Histories
- Chapter 14 ‘Now Good or Bad, ’tis but the Chance of War’
- Chapter 15 ‘Precurse of Feared Events’
- Chapter 16 But What Are We Fighting For?
- Chapter 17 Henry V and the Battle of Powerscourt
- Chapter 18 Unser Shakespeare in Nazi Germany
- Chapter 19 Framing the Jew
- Chapter 20 G. Wilson Knight’s ‘Royal Propaganda’ in ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (1941)
- Chapter 21 Shakespeare’s Desert Camouflage
- Chapter 22 ‘May I with Right and Conscience Make This Claim?’
- Chapter 23 Henry V and the Invasion of Iraq
- Chapter 24 Who Pays the Price?
- Chapter 25 ‘Mere Prattle, without Practice, Is All His Soldiership’
- Chapter 26 ‘Thou Hast Set Me on the Rack’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 24 - Who Pays the Price?
Maria Aberg on Roy Williams’s Days of Significance (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023
- Shakespeare at War
- Shakespeare at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 ‘The Truth for Which We Are Fighting’
- Chapter 2 The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and Garrick’s Shakespearean Nationalism
- Chapter 3 Revolutionary Shakespeare
- Chapter 4 Hamlet Mobilized
- Chapter 5 Shakespeare, the North-West Passage, and the Russian War
- Chapter 6 ‘Now for Our Irish Wars’
- Chapter 7 Shakespeare and the Survival of Middle England
- Chapter 8 Ellen Terry Stars at the Shakespeare Hut
- Chapter 9 The 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary at № 1 Camp in Calais
- Chapter 10 Shakespeare Does His Bit for the War Effort
- Chapter 11 Germanizing Shakespeare during the First World War
- Chapter 12 Readers and Rebels
- Chapter 13 Forgotten Histories
- Chapter 14 ‘Now Good or Bad, ’tis but the Chance of War’
- Chapter 15 ‘Precurse of Feared Events’
- Chapter 16 But What Are We Fighting For?
- Chapter 17 Henry V and the Battle of Powerscourt
- Chapter 18 Unser Shakespeare in Nazi Germany
- Chapter 19 Framing the Jew
- Chapter 20 G. Wilson Knight’s ‘Royal Propaganda’ in ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (1941)
- Chapter 21 Shakespeare’s Desert Camouflage
- Chapter 22 ‘May I with Right and Conscience Make This Claim?’
- Chapter 23 Henry V and the Invasion of Iraq
- Chapter 24 Who Pays the Price?
- Chapter 25 ‘Mere Prattle, without Practice, Is All His Soldiership’
- Chapter 26 ‘Thou Hast Set Me on the Rack’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In this interview, Maria Aberg gives a detailed account of her production of Days of Significance, which premiered at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 10 January 2007 and then toured to the Tricycle Theatre in London and to other venues across the UK. Aberg explains how her production highlighted a pervasive presence of violence connected to the kind of masculinity allowed and fostered in young men at home that then has enormous consequences when these same men are sent into armed conflict abroad. She also explains how the fact that Days of Significance was loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing had a significant impact on how differently her production was interpreted and reviewed in Stratford-upon-Avon and elsewhere, where most members of the audience were not aware (and were not made aware) of the Shakespearean connection. In this respect, Aberg’s interview reinforces the realization shared by most of the contributors to this collection that the significance of ‘wartime Shakespeare’ is often complex and context-dependent.
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- Shakespeare at WarA Material History, pp. 231 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023