Stanley Wells
Stanley Wells
Stanley Wells, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare, former Director of the Shakespeare Institute. Described by Roy Hattersley as “Our greatest authority on Shakespeare’s life and work,” is Chairman of the Trustees of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
He is the author and editor of many books including The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd Edition (OUP 2005); The Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare (OUP, 2003); and Shakespeare in the Theatre (OUP, 1997).
Audio Excerpt
Shakespeare’s plays have always been open to interpretation. For this reason, he argues that “there is no such thing as a Shakespeare play.”
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Interview Excerpts
FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH SHAKESPEARE
STANLEY WELLS: My original interest in Shakespeare derives from school. Like many people, I had an inspiring schoolteacher. And I think it’s fair to say that my first real response to Shakespeare came not through the plays, but through a sonnet. It’s the sonnet beginning, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes . . .” which was taught to me – I had to learn it by heart – by my English master. And I responded to the language of that sonnet; to the emotions and the way that the emotions lying behind it find their realization in words, in rhythms, and the music of the sonnet. It was at a time of adolescence – early adolescence. The sonnet is about friendship and ultimately about love. So it certainly struck a chord with – with my developing self, at a period of — when maturity was looming – as it were – and I’m sure that it spoke to me partly for technical reasons because of what I talked about – about its poetic mastery. But also because of what it says. And because I thought — as I read it and as I heard it – I thought about how I, myself, felt towards friends and towards loved ones.
THE THEATRICALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
STANLEY WELLS: Shakespeare doesn’t come fully and properly to life until he’s acted. And this informed, for example, in later years when I became an editor – when I was general editor, as I still am, of The Oxford Shakespeare — but when I was editing The Complete Works one of my aims there was to edit the plays in ways which threw emphasis on their theatricality and which enabled the reader to understand more how the play would be performed in the theater than, I think, many earlier acting editions did.
So I do believe very firmly in the importance of the theater toward the understanding – by understanding I mean really to finding Shakespeare entertaining, to — in finding him stimulating. Because I think Shakespeare was a great entertainer.
THE NARRATIVES OF SHAKESPEARE
STANLEY WELLS: There are not many plays in which the actual narrative is invented by Shakespeare. That’s not, however, the same as saying, as some people do, that Shakespeare stole all his plots. He didn’t. He stole, if you like – if you want to put it like that – narrative elements, but the plotting — the construction of the plays – is his. And that’s the most important part of it, the building together.
The way that he – let’s say in Julius Caesar, for example, the way that he compresses the time scheme so that you get a marvelously energetic sweep of action from the opening of the play to the – through the murder of Caesar to the killing of Casper the Poet. The interest dissipates a bit in the last couple of acts, I think.
But he shapes the plays, he adds to them, he adds characters to the stories that he found. I mean, in Romeo and Juliet, for example, he almost adds – almost totally adds the characters of the nurse and Mercutio. And he – the plotting of the plays is his. This is important, I think, partly because it gives you – the plays are multi-dimensional; they can work on many different levels.
I think this is partly why it is possible for young people – even quite young children – to get quite a lot out of a Shakespeare play, on the narrative level – the story level. Macbeth, for example, will work very well with school boys, school girls — perhaps to a slightly lesser extent — because it’s a damn good story. That doesn’t mean to say they’re picking up understanding all the intellectual, the psychological – the philosophical even – resonances that lie behind the play. It does mean that they can be carried through.
It even explains why sometimes Shakespeare without words could work. You know, after all, in the days of the silent film a lot of silent films were made based on Shakespeare. There are ballets based on Shakespeare, with no words at all, but the story the shaping of the story is there – and will work. It’s the same with some of the operas based on Shakespeare.
So I think it is worth remembering that Shakespeare can work on a number of different levels at once. That he can appeal on the narrative level of sheer excitement, of murder, of sudden death – you know the Julius Caesar, the murder of Caesar and Macbeth the murder of King Duncan and so on — while at the same time engaging people’s minds at a deeper level. A level which may sometimes be subconscious.
