This essay was written by Brett C. McInelly, a BYU Humanities Center one-year faculty fellow.
Situated on the south bank of the Thames—only a stone’s throw from where Shakespeare’s playhouse originally stood—the Globe Theatre offers Shakespeare enthusiasts the opportunity to experience the Bard’s dramatic works in a setting designed to replicate as much as possible the experience of Elizabethan playgoers. Admittedly (and thankfully), there are a few modern additions, like public restrooms! After all, we don’t need to recreate the full experience of these early playgoers. And I’ve come to learn that standing in the yard as a groundling really is the best “seat” in the house and the most enjoyable way to experience a play at the Globe. This includes standing through a three-hour and forty-five-minute production of Othello on a chilly and damp evening in April of 2007, a production that served as my then eleven-year-old son’s introduction to Shakespeare. I assumed that his initial enthusiasm about attending his first Shakespeare play had waned during the lengthy and chilly performance. But when asked by one of my study-abroad students what he thought about the production, my son paused thoughtfully and then declared, “I don’t know. It was full of so much agony and horror!” Not a word about standing for nearly four hours or how cold and wet the evening had been. I beamed with pride. My son got tragedy!
Over the years, I’ve experienced nearly two dozen Shakespearean productions at the Globe, but one performance I witnessed nearly a decade ago proved my most memorable visit to that theatre, a venue I’ve grown to love. Memorable, in part, because I saw what I consider one of the more delightful of Shakespeare’s plays to see in performance—Much Ado About Nothing! Of course, I’d seen Much Ado before, both at the Globe and at other venues, to say nothing of several film adaptations. What ultimately made this production so memorable was the circumstances that defined this one performance—circumstances that are part and parcel of live theatre. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get!
Just as the show was about to begin, the artistic director came on stage and announced that the actress playing Beatrice, the female lead, was ill and was unable to perform. He explained that the actress who played Magaret, a much smaller role, would be playing the part of Beatrice, though she would have to carry a script since she did not know all the lines by heart. For Margaret, the director explained that he had recruited, in a seeming act of desperation, a secretary from the Globe’s business office to play the part—a woman with zero acting experience, ability, or ambition. She, too, would naturally have to carry a script. The artistic director then offered those in attendance a refund if they’d prefer to come back on a night when the cast was fully intact. I don’t know how many people accepted the offer, but those who did missed out!
The actress who played Beatrice was fantastic. She was an exceptionally well-trained Shakespearean actor, and she knew the role even as she occasionally referred to the script in her hand. The secretary, on the other hand, was terrible! She was no more adept at reciting Shakespeare than 8th graders reading Romeo & Juliet out loud in front of their peers. And yet there was something charming in her mortified “performance”—and I, along with the entire audience, found myself rooting for her, and I accepted that we had left the world of “professional” theatre.
Watching a well-trained actress gracefully inhabit a part she had never played nor rehearsed alongside a secretary-turned-actress clumsily playing a part she neither sought nor relished proved a show within the show—fitting perhaps for a Shakespeare play. And then in the play’s final moments the two shows merged seamlessly together into a theatrical experience never to be forgotten, both for the audience and the performers on the stage. As Beatrice delivered her last line, feigning reluctance as she accepts the marriage proposal of Benedick (her sworn enemy at the outset of the play), the actor playing Benedick stormed across the stage and declared, “Peace! I will stop your mouth [with a kiss].”[1] Benedick then took the script from Beatrice’s hands and hurled it into the air as he delivered a kiss worthy of the moment! The audience erupted as if they were watching their favorite team score a game-winning touchdown. To this day, that response remains the loudest and most joyous I’ve ever experienced at the Globe—or any theatrical venue.
And it just got better. During the curtain call, the poor secretary stood at the back of the stage looking as if she wanted to dissolve into the woodwork and return to the safety and anonymity of her desk, somewhere far off stage and out of view of the audience’s gaze. Two of her castmates, however, had other plans as they, with some effort, brought her to the front of the stage where she was greeted with, yes, a standing ovation! I’ve seen Ian McKellen on stage. I’ve seen Hellen Miran and Angela Lansbury and Jude Law perform live. What the audience offered the secretary-turned-actress that evening was no less enthusiastic nor appreciative than what I’ve seen bestowed on these titans of the stage and cinema for their performances. Of course, we weren’t cheering the skill or precision of her acting, or her capacity to believably inhabit the character she played. No, we cheered her courage and her willingness to step into a role she was not prepared to play and one that took her well outside her comfort zone—all so the show might go on.
And I would imagine that many of us saw ourselves in her performance, envying perhaps her moment in the spotlight. But mostly we recognized that we would have similarly failed in catastrophic fashion, all the while hoping that we, too, would be afforded the same generosity and grace when thrust into a difficult situation and pressed way beyond our abilities or talents. In a world where perfection—even exceptionality—are difficult, if not impossible, to attain, that evening standing in the yard at the Globe reminded me that it’s in grace, given and received, rather than talent or ability or even effort, that we find joy and inch ever closer to heaven.
References
[1] William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, eds., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018, 195.
