WISH YOU WERE HERE notes

Take 4 experts and 12 actors from the leading Dutch acting company, Toneel Groep AMsterdam. Add an alarm button to press if you want to interject. Tie it together with a funny master of ceremonies and voila! The Rabotheater was full and the promise of apples and beer onstage at the end kept us slavering.

Here are some hasty notes i made:

Shakespeare was een eenvoudige vent. Shakespeare was a simple guy. He dramatised our lives.

Ulysses speech about degree when talking about the cosmology of the Elizabethans.

Throw in some Richard 2nd laying on the ground and talking of Kings.

The Copernican versus the Ptolymean world views. Or does the sun revolve around the earth? Or the earth the sun?
The Church dictated the ancient view and scientific minds accepted in private the new. Bruno, Descartes, Huygens and Newton all represented the new.

Shakespeare lived in interesting times. The old world order was changing on all levels. Humoral psychology moved towards scientific investigation. Church and the divine right of Kings was being challenged by secular learning aided by the printing press and the growth of business and exploration. Money talks and influences power bases.

Niets is helemaal zeker. Zelfs dat niet.
Nothing is for certain. Not even that.

The City theatre or Schouwburg in Amsterdam dates from 1638. Before this rederijkers or rhetoricians met in an Academy of letters on the Keizersgracht from 1617-1637. Prior to this the same rederijkers had practiced their art since the late 15thC; wherever they could, in public space or on temporary podia.

The point is they were out there, and thinking and living and breathing on the pathos, weighing light on the ethos, if needs be to turn the logos, and spin the argument either and or both ways.

What’s being worshipped by rhetoricians? The swaying of hearts and minds through words. What greater example than Mark Antony’s oration to the crowd after Caesar’s assassination.

Rhetoric then is one aspect of early modern performance we cannot ignore. Rhetoric consists of
Pathos works on the emotions of the crowds
Ethos works on their sense of right and wrong
Logos works on the words and how we use them.

Nowadays rhetoric is still in full swing. We use it constantly in our TV shows and Films. Also politicians and religious institutions use it to justify their temporal power or heavenly sway.

here’s a pdf of rhetorical devices commonly used.

Identity viewed through the lenses of Benedick and Beatrice, Viola and Olivia.
Keats Negative capability. Harold Bloom’s thesis that Shakespeare caused the individual was mentioned too.
The mirroring of microcosm (person) and macrocosm (society, universe) too.

Shakespeare isn’t in his works, he has a capacity for vanishing.

All in all a good night out at the theatre worshipping the Bard. Wish you were here continues with nights on Ibsen, Bergman and Chekhov.

If you want to see hear and learn more about SHakespeare you could always attend one of our Shakespeare Karaoke evenings at the Badhuis theater. The difference being the audience gets to play too.