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Not Only a Question of Money: Shakespeare and the Ego Decade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Liisa Hakola
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Abstract

We get not only the kind of government but also the kind of theatre we deserve, argues Liisa Hakola, who here relates the new impulses behind Shakespearean productions of the 1980s to the social and economic assumptions which came to prevail in Britain during the ‘Thatcher decade’ – and seemingly beyond. Desirable though increased subsidy for the theatre may be – in particular for the RSC, as chief purveyors of Shakespeare – what determines the relevance of Shakespearean productions to their times, she suggests, transcends the availability of cash subsidies, however symptomatic of a prevailing climate their size or scarcity may be. Although based in Helsinki, Liisa Hakola spent much of the 1980s in Britain, preparing her PhD thesis, published in 1988, on three RSC productions of Richard II. She has published two other books in Finnish, and also translated five of Fay Weldon's novels into that language.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 33 , February 1993 , pp. 37 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes and References

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