Tom McKay as Brutus, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen (2008-2015)

The same speech works differently in Ben Whishaw’s performance for the 2018 production at the Bridge Theatre. For this production, the Bridge Theatre was configured as a modern version of an Elizabethan playhouse, its central acting space being surrounded on four sides by audience members in raised galleries. The pit was filled with modern “groundlings”, who stood around several platform stages that were raised and lowered as necessary. As Whishaw’s Brutus begins his speech, he looks up from his desk to address the spectators in the galleries. This Brutus does not seem to be listening to the audience so much as lecturing them, making precise gestures with his fingers as if to illustrate the specificity of his points. He grows in confidence as his lecture progresses, swivelling to address larger sections of the audience and springing up to read them a pertinent passage from one of his books. It is striking that he seems interested only in the galleries, virtually ignoring the standing playgoers in the pit. Whishaw’s Brutus is thus less a “man of the people” than McKay’s, a member of an intellectual elite who is dabbling dangerously with a public about which he is comfortable theorising, but less able to engage directly.

Ben Whishaw as Brutus, Julius Caesar, National Theatre Collection 1

Othello : Iago – “Divinity of hell!”

So far, we have looked at figures who attempt to make the audience complicit in their actions – a cynical coward, and an idealistic would-be political assassin. In both cases, Shakespeare is inviting his audience to entertain, however temporarily and provisionally, the arguments of men with subversive ideas. Such complicity between the audience and the soliloquising figure becomes more problematic when we look at Iago in Othello. Iago dominates the direct address in this play, with more than double the number of soliloquies and lines of direct address allotted to Othello himself, and ten times more than any other character in the play. As he goes about trashing the reputations of Othello’s wife Desdemona and his lieutenant Cassio in order to manipulate Othello into thinking, falsely, that Desdemona has been unfaithful, Iago shares his plans with the audience, effectively casting them as co-conspirators.

This clip from Tim McInnerny’s performance at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2007 demonstrates some of the effects that a performer can achieve in the role, especially under shared light conditions. McInnerny’s Iago raises a laugh from the audience even before his speech begins, simply by sharing a satisfied smile at the successful unfolding of his scheme. He immediately starts to goad the spectators, playfully at first, daring them to accuse him of being “a villain” (2.3.331) as he points out, with a thick layer of irony, that the advice he has given Cassio is “directly to his good” (2.3.345). His eyes scan the crowd, looking for anyone who will dare to accuse him. His jovial demeanour suddenly drops as he spins around to tell a different section of the audience that this is “Divinity of hell!” (2.3.345), a malicious use of seemingly friendly advice. He seems almost to be defying the audience here, unconcerned by what he takes to be their condemnation of his behaviour.

Tim McInnerny as Iago, Othello, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen (2008-2015)

Notice how, just before the speech, the audience laughs at Cassio’s description of his comrade as “honest Iago” (2.3.330). This is indicative of a problem that productions sometimes have as audiences share privileged knowledge of the plot that Iago is spinning. When, a few scenes later, Othello begins his first major soliloquy, spectators are fully aware of the nature of Iago’s plan. Othello’s first line to the audience – “This fellow’s of exceeding honesty” (3.3.262) – is so palpably untrue that playgoers sometimes laugh at it, forcing the actor either to pretend he has not heard them, or to double down in order to defend Othello’s faith in Iago. Othello confides his fears to the audience, concluding that his blackness, his age, or his (as he thinks) unsophisticated manners must have weakened Desdemona’s love for him. If, as in this clip of Eamonn Walker’s performance from the same production, Othello makes eye contact with spectators when he shares these thoughts, seeking confirmation for his suspicions from them, it places the audience in an ethically impossible quandary: their silence, as theatrical convention demands, serves to confirm Othello’s baseless suspicions and to fortify Iago’s wicked scheme.

Eamonn Walker as Othello, Othello, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen (2008-2015)

Clint Dyer’s 2022 production for the National Theatre countered this aspect of the play’s dramaturgy by giving Paul Hilton’s Iago an onstage audience for his soliloquies. This chorus seems to be a figment of Iago’s own imagination. He wakes them up, one by one, as he touches them, and they pay him such direct, unwavering attention – at one point, leaning forward as a group to hear what he has to say – that it is not hard to interpret them as Iago’s wish-fulfilment fantasy, a manifestation of the sort of recognition he believes he deserves but does not get in life. Though Hilton’s Iago also addresses the theatre audience here, there is less of a sense that they are complicit in his plans. It is the onstage chorus, not the real audience, who nod in eerie approval of Iago’s scheme – the audience Iago wishes he were addressing, rather than the actual audience who sit before him in the theatre.

Paul Hilton as Iago, Othello, National Theatre Collection 3

Antony and Cleopatra : Cleopatra – “You’re caught!”

Another dramaturgical problem presents itself in Shakespeare’s distribution of soliloquies. In many plays, for example – though by no means all – the soliloquies are predominantly spoken by male characters. Iago and Othello, for instance, are given multiple opportunities to share their thoughts and feelings with the audience, but Desdemona gets a paltry three lines of soliloquy (4.2.109-11). In Antony and Cleopatra , the direct address is dominated by Antony and his right-hand man Enobarbus – Cleopatra gets no more than two brief asides (1.1.42-5 and 3.13.160), and even these are not necessarily played out to the audience. The effect of such unevenness can be to present the events of the play through a “male gaze”, inviting audiences to share the subjectivity of the soliloquising men but to view the female characters from an external perspective which is less interested in their interior lives. Productions can, however, counter such dramaturgical bias by finding opportunities for direct contact with the audience during other speeches. In this 2014 production of Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe, for example, Eve Best’s Cleopatra shares her delight in her seductive capabilities with the audience – but in her clowning with spectators, she makes them complicit in her strategies, rather than, as might be the case in a less interactive production, being objectified and displayed for the audience’s judgment.

Eve Best as Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen (2008-2015)

 

As these brief examples indicate, Shakespeare’s texts are open to a variety of different effects. Choosing to address spectators directly at key moments – or, indeed, choosing not to – can have profound implications for the interpretation of the play as a whole. The videos availables in Drama Online’s collection offer a wealth of performances that illustrate the effects of such decisions.

References
Escolme, Bridget (2005) Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self, London & New York: Routledge.

All quotations from Shakespeare are from the Arden Third Series editions available on Drama Online.

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