Shakespeare Circle

Tiny intro to me and my research: I'm a part-time postgraduate researcher in theatre studies at the University of York. My research area is Shakespeare, digital theatre, and accessibility.

This survey is part of my masters research, where I'm looking at how the accessibility of streamed Shakespeare productions has changed since lockdown and if there's anything we can do to make it better. I want to hear from as many people with as many different access needs as possible.

You don't have to identify as disabled to take part. It's not a super long survey but it will take time because most of the questions are asking you to answer in your own words. There is an Easy Read English pathway for anyone who might find reading English difficult.

Anything you think might be relevant, take the survey and tell me about it.

Can't afford the streaming services? Tell me. Glad you can watch from home because actual theatres are inaccessible for you? Tell me. Streamed something really accessible but it wasn't Shakespeare? Tell me. Never managed to find a show you wanted to watch that actually had audio description? Tell me. Only ever streamed shows illegally uploaded to YouTube - bestie, this survey is anonymous and you now have the power to make me explain what a slime video is in my thesis!

If you have any questions, other access requirements, or would prefer to do the survey in another format, please contact me and I will do everything I can to help.

You can access the survey via this link: https://bit.ly/AccessibleShakespeareStreamingSurvey

[IMAGE ID: Light blue poster with University of York logo at the top and an illustration of a laptop with Shakespeare on the screen. The poster text reads "Accessible Shakespeare Streaming: (post-)pandemic accessibility of on-demand live-recorded Shakespeare productions. Are you interested in Shakespeare or theatre? Have you watched a theatre production online? Are you d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, have an impairment, or have any access needs? Take part in this survey and help make streaming Shakespeare productions more accessible for everyone!"]

So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.

Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.

Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.

At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.

Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.

How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?

modern stagings of hamlet should keep them as royalty unless the fact that they aren't is hugely relevant to that production.

benedick and beatrice should be in their early 30s at least and claudio and hero should be noticeably younger. beatrice being adamant against marriage and both her and benedick's reaction to each other makes more sense if they're older.

this one's controversial but i think paris should be in his late teens, not way older. i might make another post elaborating on this but paris' death frames him as another victim of the families' violence, with romeo mourning + identifying him as being in the same situation as himself. it's not that old man paris isn't a good interpretation; it's often the easiest way to show romeo and juliet's positions as children helpless under their parents, and makes very clear what demands are being made of juliet. but i feel that adding paris to the list of young people killed in the play as a byproduct of the adults' violence gives romeo's identification with him more weight. given that he clearly has much more control than romeo and juliet but is still identified as a victim of the violence, i think it makes the most sense if he's a bit older than r&j but still very much young.

modern stagings of julius caesar should keep all the knives as knives, but if there has to be a gun, make cassius shoot himself in the head while caesar and brutus still die by stabbing. i've posted about this but the short version is that's it's the best way to show cassius' death as cowardly in contrast to brutus and caesar, whose deaths still mirror each other.

give the fool in king lear an onstage reason for disappearing. i like the 2018 national theatre version that has edmund kill him, and the 2023 south korean production that had cordelia be the fool in disguise the whole time. there was one from 2014 where lear beat him to death in madness which i think would be very shocking, but to good effect. the subsequent lack of comedy in the play after his disappearance would feel more jarring if we actually see his death.

if the actor is a grown man, his feelings for his mother are repugnant-- the overbearing entitled misogyny of a hateful man, not the grief and confusion of a son abandoned. if the actor is a grown man, his vacillating feelings for ophelia are sadistic or pathetic, not the self-absorbed failing of a teenager catastrophically fumbling his first (and final) love in the midst of overwhelming emotional chaos. and if hamlet is a grown man, his long reluctance to actually get violent with claudius, and the way he just passive-aggressively snips at the guy, show him as an ineffectual coward, which just gets even weirder and more pathetic when he charges catastrophically into combat with laertes. a teenage hamlet repeatedly failing to nerving himself up to attack a king twenty years older than him makes more sense-- as does that teenager's ensuing suicidal tantrum during ophelia's burial.