Thus far one Bryan Curtis, scribe of Slate:
It's ironic, then, that part of the appeal of Shakespeare in the Park is its negligible demand on the brain. One need not know anything about Shakespeare going in, and, if my experience in Central Park Sunday night is any indication, one will not know much more going out. As I left As You Like It, I had only a sketchy grasp of Rosalind's big speech at the end, and a vague notion of the machinations of Duke Frederick's court, but I was suffering an unusual amount of self-approbation.
The gentleman then, forsooth, refers us to a study of the Park's public, done by learnéd doctors:
The study found that Shakespearean middlebrows had a few common features. One was a struggle to wrap their brains around the Bard's English. "Few admitted, directly, to difficulty with the language," the authors wrote. "Rather, they ascribed this problem to others." Another feature was an inability to recall even the basic rudiments of the plot shortly after the performance. (One "inveterate theatergoer" burbled, "At the end, they all turn out all right.") Finally, Shakespeare in the Park produced a gentle narcotizing effect, a contact high of "genuine pleasure," that made the middlebrows' intellectual powers fade into the moonlight.
Which maketh me inwardly to ask what this gentleman might have made of a day spent at the Globe, the Curtain or the Rose? Doubtless he would have censured both gentlemen and groundlings for paying more heed to one another (and to the bona robas near at hand) than to my words; for precious few of them went from the playhouse with my story all intact in their brains. Nay, if this Curtis found Master Papp's style overbroad, then Burbage in a royal passion, or Kempe in high fooling, must have brought the poor scribe near to death of an apoplexy.
All of which is to say: those players of mine that strut and sweat upon the greensward do so with no less honour than any who play within doors. 'Twould be a poor world indeed if there were but fine cakes and no honest barley bread; or sherris-wine alone with never a pot of small beer. Nay, when the day is hot 'tis your only drink; much merit in small beer. A cask of the same to Master Curtis, then, with my goodwill.
Posted by Shakespeare at June 30, 2005 4:37 PM