Thomas Dabbs speaks with Andy Kesson of the University of Roehampton. Featured in this talk is new research into Bear Baiting and also a shout out to Andy's new program, 'A Bit Lit.' Andy's research covers a host of topics on theatre history and particularly the under-studied but rich period of English drama in the decades before Shakespeare.
LINKS:
A Bit Lit: https://abitlit.co
Box Office Bears: https://boxofficebears.com
More Box Office Bears: https://beforeshakespeare.com/2020/08/03/box-office-bears-a-new-research-project-on-animal-baiting/
Box Office Bears on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vZsYjhzaD8s
Before Shakespeare: https://beforeshakespeare.com
Bears: Lyle Lovett: https://youtu.be/_T4SaNuxZO8
SEGMENTS:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:18 - A Bit Lit
00:05:45 - Andy’s research,
00:11:10 - Before Shakespeare, Trans Theatre, Gallathea,
00:18:45 - Elizabethan Top Ten
00:24:56 - Box Office Bears
00:38:53 - Theatre Before Shakespeare: 1560-1590
00:49:32 - Digital Humanities
00:55:30 - Andy’s educational background and future
01:05:00 - Bears in the future
01:10:31 - Closing remarks
Thomas Dabbs speaks with Andy Kesson of the University of Roehampton. Featured in this talk is new research into Bear Baiting and also a shout out to Andy's new program, 'A Bit Lit.' Andy's research covers a host of topics on theatre history and particularly the under-studied but rich period of English drama in the decades before Shakespeare.
LINKS:
A Bit Lit: https://abitlit.co
Box Office Bears: https://boxofficebears.com
More Box Office Bears: https://beforeshakespeare.com/2020/08/03/box-office-bears-a-new-research-project-on-animal-baiting/
Box Office Bears on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vZsYjhzaD8s
Before Shakespeare: https://beforeshakespeare.com
Bears: Lyle Lovett: https://youtu.be/_T4SaNuxZO8
SEGMENTS:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:18 - A Bit Lit
00:05:45 - Andy’s research,
00:11:10 - Before Shakespeare, Trans Theatre, Gallathea,
00:18:45 - Elizabethan Top Ten
00:24:56 - Box Office Bears
00:38:53 - Theatre Before Shakespeare: 1560-1590
00:49:32 - Digital Humanities
00:55:30 - Andy’s educational background and future
01:05:00 - Bears in the future
01:10:31 - Closing remarks
0:00:05.280,0:00:12.080
This is Speaking of Shakespeare conversations
about things Shakespearean I'm Thomas Dabbs
0:00:12.080,0:00:15.920
broadcasting from Aoyama Gakuin
University in central Tokyo
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this talk is with Andy Kessen of the University of
Roehampton among many research accomplishments in
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early modern drama Andy has recently assembled a
team and secured a substantial AHRC grant to study
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bears and bear baiting in Elizabethan England
the project is entitled Box Office Bears
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This talk is made possible with institutional
funding from Aoyama Gakuin University
0:00:51.680,0:00:57.840
and with the support of a generous grant from
the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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Well hello Andy hello again it's been a
it's been too long it's been too long and
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i think we go back i think we've known each other
because we've had similar research interests for
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you know me for more years than you but that i
don't know when we first met it may have been
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in canada it may have been at stratford ontario at
that conference where we actually met face to face
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and then you and jimmy came through tokyo not
that long after that and we went out and had
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some wonderful sushi with ben crystal right and
i had to leave early unfortunately i had another
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again and i really wanted to stay for that but ben
was in town and what a nice coincidence and then
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i saw you again at that absolutely exquisite
before shakespeare conference it's one of my
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fondest memories of conferences but
also just memories those few days
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over in rowhampton with those people uh it's
just the exactly the kind of people you would
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like to spend three days with we had a blast
and we learned so much and for our our viewers
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what i want to do is start out you're doing
some things you're doing a lot of work and
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one of the things i want to feature right now is
that you are doing a series of interviews sort
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of like these in a similar type of format but
a little bit more of a kaleidoscope of people
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who are from various and sundry disciplines who
are all very interested uh interesting before the
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show i was going through a few of those and
it's called a bit lit a bit b-i-t lit l-i-t
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now tell us a little bit about that in the future
is it something you're going to keep doing or
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something that is for i don't know pandemic
purposes because it sort of was provoked by
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the pandemic right so uh yeah yeah um thank you
so much for kind introduction tom um that's really
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generous of you um yeah so a bit that is a lot
like the film series that you've set up here
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um i as soon as covert hit really i felt like
i was surrounded by all the people that i love
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worrying about the things that they love and
whether they matter anymore people asking do
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the humanities matter does theatre matter
does performance matter does writing matter
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at a time of medical emergency um and it seems
to me that those things matter as much if not
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more at a time of medical emergency so yeah a bit
which was set up with um callan davis and emma
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whipped a and james opry and matt martin not not
just by myself um was just aiming to celebrate um
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those things and to give us a space almost a
space to meet for coffee or to me if you were
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researching a library and bumped into a colleague
just that sense of serendipity of who you you
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might run into and it was very important to us
that we we looked as widely as possible in terms
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of the sorts of people and the kinds of content
that we might cover um the three academics on the
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project are all early modernists we all sit in the
16th and 17th century and we all look at english
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literature so actually we're quite narrowly
defined in terms of our research interests
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but it was really important to us we made that
as as broad as possible so we've spoken to
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creative writers to performers of all kinds
of different disciplines not just theatre
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and we've spoken to academics across a wide
range of topics not as wide as i'd like it
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to be we always want to hear from other
people who'd like to come and speak to us
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but yeah it's been really fun really fun project
well i see you're putting these out about once a
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week and i i know from experience now that that's
not easy uh that's a that's at a pretty good clip
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and uh getting people set up and getting the
timing and also you're going through i'm assuming
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various like i am various time zones where you
you may have to wake up early or go to bed late
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right now it's your morning it's my evening and
as we talk the sun will go down right and you
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will you will have more and more sunshine which is
good that's fine that that's the way it should be
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but uh but i fully agree with you we're sort of
focused on shakespeare here because i'm on a grant
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but one of the driving things behind this
was would be to expose people and not just
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specialists but expose people to who we are there
are misconceptions about the ivory tower about us
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being maybe smug and uh detached from society and
in your research if there is anyone more engaged
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with the popular consciousness not only now but
in the 16th century i can't think of anyone who
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is uh in your work you have really brought out
the uh drama before shakespeare and we're going
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to go to before shakespeare in just a moment but
those elements that led up to an extraordinarily
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large and growing public reception that was
set in place pretty much before shakespeare
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got in there and that's what he inherited and very
much benefited from uh the the people coming to
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the theater but also the dramatic techniques
that were developed during that period before
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shakespeare and i would like you to kind of recap
your your interest in this area before shakespeare
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what drew you to it and uh what excites you about
it what excites me about it too i might jump in at
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one point but i think it's about the same thing
so tell us a little bit about that if you may
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uh well i did my phd on a writer called john
lilly who is a contemporary shakespeare but
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born 10 years earlier and the thing that i
found most challenging with that phd was that
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just those additional 10 years the kind of the
the the decades jump in kind of historical context
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made me feel orphaned from the kinds of
scholarship that we have on the 1590s
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and onwards and we do have some grasp on
the 1580s when it comes to the theater we
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think of dr faustus and spanish tragedy i think of
marlow who you've written about so brilliantly tom
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but unlike the 1590s it doesn't feel like we
have a kind of a holistic wide-ranging knowledge
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of that decade and then if we get to the decades
before that it just felt like there was um
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relatively little scholarship and happening um in
in wonderfully detailed ways um david kaufman is a
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great example of the kinds of brilliant archival
work that was happening has been happening in
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in the earlier period but no one really pulling
putting things together and trying to take a wider
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a wider view of the period um and in particular
i don't really feel anyone looked at those
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those theaters those playhouses as a group and
said what on earth is going on there so that
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was sort of my essential research question
is why from at least the 1560s and even more
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strongly in terms of our evidence base in the
1570s why do these public-facing profit-making
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uh ventures start popping up in london we go
from zero to over ten in a decade i can't see
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that happening anywhere else possibly on the
planet in those years um and certainly not in
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europe even places like spain seem to be a few
years behind and in somewhere like spain you
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tend to have one or two theaters per city london
suddenly has ten and um as i say i didn't really
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feel like anyone was joining joining up those
dots and i'm working on john lilly who works for
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he wrote for a company of boy actors and
then thinking about someone like marlo
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who's writing mostly for a group of adult
actors but again those dots are not being
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joined either i don't have any sense really of
how those theater companies how they operated
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alongside each other what it would mean for
a playwright to write for one or the other
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so it was a kind of historical and cultural
geographic attempt to to join those dots really
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yeah well it's a great contribution to the field
of research because you and i both know when
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you get into shakespeare research that there's
nothing there's no stone that seems uncovered
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and you you want to make a point and it hadn't
been made before like if you're doing mid-summer
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night stream for instance there's all of this
stuff to go through and everybody and there's
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this one little point but you have to give cred
to the people all the way down and it's exhausting
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and so and and then people will
you know maybe disagree with you
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now i do want to clarify for some of my
students and so forth the 1590s is when we
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we're not quite sure precisely when shakespeare
arrived on the scene but certainly by mid-1590s
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and after those play years there is a a big
bump and probably some things before the plague
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but the 1590s so you're talking about lily who
developed and i think i'm saying this right
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primed the pump for a popular marketplace
for shake for public or semi-public
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uh theater and also bringing to the uh bringing
together this relationship between court and city
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where you could kind of uh wrote if not rotate
plays at that time you could you the finding
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that you can entertain groups in the city as well
as at court and that you can publish these plays
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right at the point that you've made several
times and these plays sold they were popular
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and that's what opened the market for publication
of shakespearean plays which may not have been
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published and we wouldn't have them uh so that
uh that's just an amazing contribution well the
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the group of people you had at that con conference
uh hogarzeim and uh of course uh heather knight uh
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they they kind of uh stole part of the show there
were some still show stealing moments there was a
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a production of gallatia which is a fairly
obscure even the people in the business
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uh is not that studied that you explored
you brought in a group of transgendered
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acting troop and that play is gender-bending as
it is right so it's re-gender-bended and i'm i got
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lost a little bit on on how many flips yeah you
know it gets kind of mathematically complicated
0:11:39.840,0:11:45.760
and sort of uh adorable that way right it was an
excellent production and they led us from a room
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out into the woods there at rohampton we had to
follow along with the actors and uh that was a
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wonderful great moment how is that troop doing how
are they faring uh you know almost post-pandemic
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i i can't imagine things have gone well yeah we
we um we've been in a kind of a long period of um
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uh what's called research and development so
kind of um pre pre-rehearsal really phase of
0:12:10.160,0:12:13.760
the project for five years because we want to
firstly want to get the production right and
0:12:13.760,0:12:19.920
secondly we need to raise a good deal of money so
we're not quite a troop yet um the actors you saw
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we have this kind of coming in and out of the
research and development process um as we go
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um we hope to have that production on its feet
um next year we're hoping to make a film of it
0:12:31.120,0:12:36.800
which will make us covered proof uh we hope and
um yeah it's gonna be really exciting i hope to
0:12:37.680,0:12:42.160
to stage this play for my money it's shakespeare's
favorite play he never recovers from it he's
0:12:42.160,0:12:46.800
thinking about the gender bending you're
describing in two gentlemen of verona
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and he's thinking about it in the middle of his
career like with as you like it or 12th night
0:12:50.960,0:12:56.480
and even a late play like the tempest the second
scene of that play where her father explains
0:12:56.480,0:13:01.520
to his daughter who she is and why she's where
she is comes straight out of the first scene of
0:13:02.240,0:13:06.320
of galatea so it's a play that shakespeare
never really recovers from i sometimes think
0:13:06.320,0:13:12.240
of it almost as a kind of creative trauma for him
he's always trying to to rewrite and renegotiate
0:13:12.240,0:13:17.120
some of the things that that galatea does um
and as far as we know it has no stage history
0:13:17.120,0:13:22.240
from the 17th century up to the present day
really um and we're hoping to permanently
0:13:22.800,0:13:29.520
reintroduce it to the modern repertory so we're
hoping it will be a very visible production which
0:13:29.520,0:13:35.840
might change conversations around shakespeare
genre gender and also change conversations around
0:13:35.840,0:13:40.560
around diversity and inclusion which
certainly in the anglo-american tradition
0:13:40.560,0:13:48.480
at the moment tends towards including a single
representative of diversity in an otherwise very
0:13:48.480,0:13:54.000
normative and normal looking group of people
and our production is trying instead to center
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all the kinds of people who would normally be
marginalized by those kinds of productions and
0:13:58.560,0:14:04.160
ask what happens when we do that and that's
really important to me i think um so so much
0:14:04.800,0:14:10.640
contemporary classical theater makes us think
of shakespeare as expensive fairly conservative
0:14:10.640,0:14:16.800
and i mean expensive at the level of budget and at
the level of um tickets and of course early modern
0:14:16.800,0:14:21.680
theater those buildings were permanently in danger
of falling down permanently in danger of being
0:14:21.680,0:14:28.800
shut down actors are semi-illegal the stories that
they're telling are very close to breaching laws
0:14:28.800,0:14:34.960
about what you can say in public about religion
or or politics so um it's really important to
0:14:34.960,0:14:41.760
me that um we start to rethink how contemporary
performance makes us imagine shakespeare because
0:14:41.760,0:14:46.720
i think unfortunately it sometimes gets in the
way as much as it helps us to think about place
0:14:46.720,0:14:53.840
from that period oh yes oh yes it tends
to eclipse uh things before and after and
0:14:53.840,0:15:01.600
also uh it you know in the era i guess from the
late 19th century of the shakespeare and academe
0:15:01.600,0:15:07.920
and the departmentalization the breaking
up of specialties and so forth uh in into
0:15:07.920,0:15:13.840
academic disciplines uh i think no i don't know
i don't want to make a big deal out of this but
0:15:13.840,0:15:18.320
if you want to kind of survive you
better keep one foot in the shakespearean
0:15:18.320,0:15:23.600
area right and you can venture out so
and there might be someone who sees this
0:15:24.640,0:15:30.080
conversation and goes well i don't know how much
shakespeare was in there you go well quite a lot
0:15:30.080,0:15:36.160
because we're talking about sort of uh primal
reasons we're going to the to the source of what
0:15:36.160,0:15:42.160
created this enormous thing and i told another
guest that you know you can't study rock the
0:15:42.160,0:15:47.440
history of rock and roll and just focus on the
stones and the beetles you know you have to throw
0:15:47.440,0:15:53.280
everything in there if you're going to do that
and i love the material approach you take to your
0:15:53.280,0:15:59.200
research where you look at everything you look at
archaeology you look at print history the nuts and
0:15:59.200,0:16:05.600
bolts of how things were put together and where
they were to you and the geophysical spaces how
0:16:05.600,0:16:10.960
they were used and that's very challenging because
we're getting not only out of shakespeare but
0:16:10.960,0:16:15.040
we're getting out of the department of literature
where we're supposed to be having revelations
0:16:15.040,0:16:21.200
about what this sonnet really means again you know
and and that's that's fun too but it just wasn't
0:16:21.200,0:16:28.880
anything i think that ever engaged you or really
engaged me to to be honest and uh that's just
0:16:29.840,0:16:33.440
yeah it's fascinating how when you start to
engage with things like archaeology they start
0:16:33.440,0:16:38.880
telling you very different things and um it was
another prompt before shakespeare really was
0:16:38.880,0:16:44.720
that you know in the early 1980s we had zero
playhouses and i'm not sure we were really
0:16:44.720,0:16:51.120
expecting to find playhouses and um as of last
year when um a brilliant archaeologist called
0:16:51.120,0:16:56.240
stephen wright uh looks to have discovered the red
lion the earliest playhouse we know of in london
0:16:56.240,0:17:00.240
we probably now have all of the playhouses
we ever expect to find we may well find
0:17:00.240,0:17:03.840
what we didn't know about but we know we've
found all the ones we might expect to find
0:17:04.880,0:17:08.480
so again there's been a sea change in out in
our knowledge and that knowledge has completely
0:17:08.480,0:17:13.680
remapped what we thought we knew so it tells you
something there i think about things and stuff
0:17:13.680,0:17:19.440
and physical spaces have completely disproven
all of the narratives we've built up from words
0:17:20.240,0:17:24.960
so yeah for me it's always about bringing those
two things into dialogue yeah and i do i do just
0:17:24.960,0:17:32.160
love the way you're in london so you have this
wonderful opportunity i love living in tokyo i
0:17:32.160,0:17:40.400
love being here but the uh sometimes i'm a little
bit uh you know i have this feeling of uh not
0:17:40.400,0:17:45.040
yeah nostalgia you know from times that i've spent
there i've done some research and spent some time
0:17:45.040,0:17:51.760
in london over my life and uh wanting to get back
there and of course during a pandemic that that
0:17:51.760,0:17:59.520
feeling becomes even stronger but i love the way
that you as a scholar as a trained scholar also
0:17:59.520,0:18:05.520
engage with the acting community and engage with
the theater history community and they're scholars
0:18:05.520,0:18:11.280
also but then there are a lot of other people who
are floating around out there and we're going to
0:18:11.280,0:18:16.480
talk about your animal baiting in a bit but you're
working with people who do forensic science now
0:18:16.480,0:18:21.440
you're working the cross-disciplinary
nature in academia and then the outreach
0:18:21.440,0:18:28.000
into avant-garde theater and consciousness
raising social consciousness raising raising
0:18:28.000,0:18:33.200
through theater and and just entertainment
what it's all about we're supposed to have fun
0:18:33.920,0:18:39.120
right yes if it's not fun we can just go
back into the business community you know go
0:18:40.080,0:18:46.720
go into the financial district and see if we can
make some money there and on that subject i wanted
0:18:46.720,0:18:51.040
to move a little bit because when i really got
engaged with your work was with the elizabethan
0:18:51.040,0:18:59.680
top ten uh that collection and that you uh worked
with with emma smith uh at hartford college oxford
0:18:59.680,0:19:09.520
and uh she she is so good at at taking this well
i don't want to say bear but it is this sort of
0:19:09.520,0:19:16.640
large animal of defining popularity what is
that you know and i remember years ago raymond
0:19:16.640,0:19:22.320
williams just came out and said uh well liked
by many people and then you know that created
0:19:22.320,0:19:26.880
well wait a second what do you mean by well
like how many people and that kind of thing
0:19:26.880,0:19:34.560
but you guys handled that subject extraordinarily
well and it was revelatory to me what was popular
0:19:34.560,0:19:43.440
you have lily right but you have the names of
some other dramatists who really um thomas hayward
0:19:43.440,0:19:50.160
did extremely productive and uh other other
things that were enlightening about that uh
0:19:50.160,0:19:56.080
that search that you did into what text were
popular were popular if you could explain a little
0:19:56.080,0:20:02.080
bit of how you approach the idea of popularity
it's a little it's difficult but uh i think yeah
0:20:03.040,0:20:07.360
but yeah the book's called the elizabethan top
10 and divided into 10 chapters and really the
0:20:07.360,0:20:13.840
idea was if you walked into a bookshop in 1600s
what might be next to hamlet and what might be
0:20:13.840,0:20:18.080
outselling hamlet i suppose hamlet's not in print
at that point so that's a bad example but what
0:20:18.080,0:20:22.720
would be outstanding in particular shakespeare
play and we were looking more at genres than we
0:20:22.720,0:20:29.920
were at writers or particular texts so we looked
at um wallpaper there's a chapter on on wallpaper
0:20:31.040,0:20:38.960
prayer books psalm books um kind of how to
books you know domestic manual books um musa
0:20:38.960,0:20:45.680
doris became the play uh we had a chapter by pete
cohen on um on musa doris so really attempt to
0:20:45.680,0:20:52.240
again just to redistribute the way we think about
literature popularity etc and to map it out into
0:20:52.240,0:20:59.280
a sort of real you know an imagined real space of
of a particular um bookshop or bookshop community
0:20:59.280,0:21:03.200
um and then i guess the theoretical point
really i think this is probably true of
0:21:03.200,0:21:07.200
emma as well but i don't want to um i don't
want to speak for her but certainly for me um
0:21:07.840,0:21:11.600
i really like engaging with questions which
interest me but i also feel skeptical about
0:21:11.600,0:21:15.600
and you were talking about how lots you know a
lot of the debate is how popular and how many
0:21:15.600,0:21:20.480
things do we need to sell how many people need to
read it before we count it as popular those sorts
0:21:20.480,0:21:24.560
of questions happen in theater history as well
i'm always amazed watching theater historians
0:21:25.120,0:21:30.640
comparing one another's theaters and thrust stages
who's got the biggest thrust stage and i'm like
0:21:30.640,0:21:34.640
calm down boys we don't need to have that
conversation in print everything's fine relax
0:21:35.200,0:21:41.120
um and yeah i guess i feel skeptical about
those sorts of i'm interested in those
0:21:41.120,0:21:45.280
methods of measurement but also skeptical about
them and in a way the book was trying to move
0:21:45.280,0:21:50.000
not necessarily beyond it in a kind of quality way
we weren't trying to do a better thing but just to
0:21:50.000,0:21:55.680
start to sidestep some of those questions and
really just to you know those are not questions
0:21:55.680,0:22:00.240
if you're going to animate someone in the 16th
century going around the bookshop um but but
0:22:00.240,0:22:05.440
it was a case as i say of redistribution i think
rather than recalibration so what is next to each
0:22:05.440,0:22:11.760
other what kinds of contexts do these books live
in amongst one another what does it look like if
0:22:11.760,0:22:17.600
we put musa doris amongst some books for example
um i think that's probably that's probably how
0:22:17.600,0:22:22.560
most of my scholarship works is stepping away
from numbers because i'm really bad at maths
0:22:22.560,0:22:26.240
and instead just thinking about what
my to real life engagement with these
0:22:26.880,0:22:30.960
things look like so just as i'm interested in
before shakespeare of the person walking down
0:22:30.960,0:22:35.520
the street and saying do i go to the theater
do i go to the curtain did i should i never
0:22:35.520,0:22:39.360
have come to shoreditch in the first place do i
want to go back to the globe down on the south
0:22:39.360,0:22:43.920
bank um likewise i'm interested in someone
in a book a bookshop confronted with those
0:22:43.920,0:22:50.000
sorts of choices what do i do with my my finite
you know pocket of money what do i spend it on
0:22:51.280,0:22:56.960
well you can't you can't separate the two
things and i've i've worked a good bit
0:22:57.520,0:23:06.000
in recent years on the bookshops of saint paul's
of paul's cross church yard and tried to in my
0:23:06.000,0:23:11.600
mind you know as a thought experiment to try to
envision what you're talking about a bookstore
0:23:11.600,0:23:18.560
that is just like a bookstore it uh you know
has sections and so there's a lot of religious
0:23:18.560,0:23:22.800
print and it's sort of is sort of dominant of
course it's dominant during that period it's
0:23:22.800,0:23:27.840
basically the reason that you know i i believe
that religious print provided the market for
0:23:27.840,0:23:34.720
the popular print that also is being browsed you
have these young gallants maybe kind of like the
0:23:34.720,0:23:38.880
two guys in romeo and juliet two gentlemen
of veronica you know all over shakespeare
0:23:38.880,0:23:45.360
who are walking around and i kind of envisioned
them walking in public areas and that paul's walk
0:23:45.360,0:23:52.000
uh you know you had this wide space at the church
yard and wandering in the stores and being able to
0:23:52.000,0:23:59.440
read here and there and everywhere shakespeare
perhaps too but also hearing hearing the buzz
0:24:00.000,0:24:07.280
right and getting a real really good sense of the
commercial market kind of like we see directors
0:24:07.280,0:24:12.960
like like clint eastwood he seems to have such an
ear for what would be the story that would capture
0:24:13.600,0:24:18.720
lots of people he does he seems to be doing it
every time and i can name any number of film
0:24:18.720,0:24:24.560
directors who are just really good at that
and that's what excites me and i think it's
0:24:24.560,0:24:32.160
very much the the same thing this is an engaged uh
artistic community they're not sitting in studies
0:24:32.160,0:24:38.240
and reading through some classical text and
getting inspired by the muse they are of course
0:24:38.240,0:24:46.240
they are the poetry is so fine but without that
public engagement and being part of it that you
0:24:46.240,0:24:54.720
just wouldn't uh be able to bring that many people
into that many theaters right yeah absolutely i
0:24:56.240,0:25:00.080
am just delighted with all of this
stuff andy and i wanted to kind of
0:25:00.080,0:25:06.400
move ahead here because i'm i'm
extraordinarily excited about bears
0:25:09.520,0:25:15.520
i saw that and i've worked up uh you know i was
looking over your stuff and just today i saw that
0:25:15.520,0:25:23.920
you've gotten a a nice little slice of money
uh from the uh let's see the ahrc and for our
0:25:24.560,0:25:29.760
non-british that stands for the arts and
humanities research council right also
0:25:29.760,0:25:33.680
funded before shakespeare so i'm very grateful
to them that's right it's the same group and
0:25:33.680,0:25:42.240
they're a pretty generous operation and you are
working you're working on bear baiting in the 16th
0:25:42.240,0:25:50.000
century which is fascinating and also politically
and emotionally sensitive for many many people
0:25:50.560,0:25:57.040
in our time you know on as a spectrum you
know of course anything from hunters who at
0:25:57.040,0:26:04.240
the in the best case scenario have a fair you
know fair shot of maybe wildlife management
0:26:04.240,0:26:09.360
and they're still you guys were pointing out in
your video there's still animal baiting all around
0:26:09.360,0:26:16.160
the world and there's a famous uh reading not so
old story about an american football quarterback
0:26:16.160,0:26:22.080
who was in fact convicted and had to i think go
to prison for dog fights he was involved with
0:26:22.080,0:26:27.760
dog fighting and there's a lot of that going
underground and it all you know there's a long
0:26:27.760,0:26:33.840
history of this and so just tell us about
the project where you are uh anything it's
0:26:33.840,0:26:38.240
fascinating yeah thank you well we're right at the
start of the project it's the first thing to say
0:26:38.240,0:26:41.600
and the beginning of the project has happened
under covert so we're not really where
0:26:42.160,0:26:49.840
we hope to be and we've got another two and a bit
years to go we're running until august 2023 um so
0:26:50.480,0:26:54.400
i think the project will start to accumulate
but it's a really exciting collaboration between
0:26:54.960,0:27:02.880
um some animal archaeologists uh some ancient dna
analysts and some archival and literary scholars
0:27:03.440,0:27:09.600
um i was lucky enough to be approached by the
bear archaeologist best job title in the world um
0:27:10.560,0:27:15.920
hannah regan um on the back of before shakespeare
really and um you know you were talking earlier
0:27:15.920,0:27:20.480
about public-facing work which as you say is
really important to me and i think one thing we
0:27:21.040,0:27:25.200
scholars often forget when they do public facing
work is they forget that they themselves are part
0:27:25.200,0:27:29.680
of the public and so are their colleagues
and actually because we were writing blog
0:27:29.680,0:27:34.400
posts on the before shakespeare website aimed
at the public they were being read by scholars
0:27:34.400,0:27:41.680
in other disciplines who normally would find it
difficult to process traditional theatre history
0:27:41.680,0:27:45.680
simply because of where it's published the
jargon that uses the assumption it makes about
0:27:45.680,0:27:51.040
what readers know and so um before shakespeare
in the website i opened up lots of collaborations
0:27:51.040,0:27:54.240
with lots of different practitioners but
hannah wrote to me on the back of that
0:27:54.240,0:27:58.320
which was wonderful and in a way it's sort of an
attempt to do something light before shakespeare
0:27:58.960,0:28:05.040
to the baiting arenas to ask why they're there why
they happen why then and why there and it's grown
0:28:05.040,0:28:10.160
into a much bigger project really asking about
bears and animals in the early modern period
0:28:10.160,0:28:15.440
and in the first two months on the project um
callan davis who's leading the archival work
0:28:15.440,0:28:23.040
he managed to find um two nearly 2 000 references
to bears in tudor and stewart england and when we
0:28:23.040,0:28:26.640
were writing the funding bid one thing everyone
kept saying to us is you won't find any evidence
0:28:26.640,0:28:31.680
of bears so there's no point even checking and
we've we've just found thousands of references
0:28:31.680,0:28:37.120
to bears you couldn't move in early modern england
for a bear one of my very favorite facts is that
0:28:37.120,0:28:42.240
bears regularly stopped traffic in early modern
england you know people stopping their horses
0:28:42.240,0:28:47.920
stopping their cars stopping walking on the street
to stare at the bears there's a really great line
0:28:47.920,0:28:54.720
in a john lily play um mother bomby one character
turns to another and says are you there with your
0:28:54.720,0:28:59.120
bears are you there with your bears and it turns
out the answer to that question is everybody
0:28:59.120,0:29:05.040
was there with their bears bears absolutely um
everywhere so we're having lots lots of fun with
0:29:05.040,0:29:12.080
the project as you say the act of baiting itself
is not remotely fun um deeply unethical cruel
0:29:12.640,0:29:22.880
sport but just hugely popular and um has been
surprisingly um understudied i think as a practice
0:29:22.880,0:29:26.560
there's some brilliant scholarship on it
but i don't think that scholarship has been
0:29:26.560,0:29:31.680
integrated well into wider accounts of theatre
history and again you know i was talking about
0:29:31.680,0:29:35.280
the person walking down the street saying
do i go to a theater do i go to the curtain
0:29:35.280,0:29:40.000
you've got exactly the same options happening
here and i'm becoming increasingly fascinated
0:29:40.000,0:29:45.200
in the south bank area where you have the globe
and you have the rose theatre and you have baiting
0:29:45.200,0:29:50.960
arenas i think rather than that being a site of
competition for audience actually you know these
0:29:50.960,0:29:55.520
places are acting as a magnet for football for
people to come and to mingle and do all the things
0:29:55.520,0:30:00.800
that we've not been allowed to do under covet
and i almost wonder if we're really looking at
0:30:00.800,0:30:07.040
an early example of a zoo or an animal-based fair
because not only have you got the abating arenas
0:30:07.040,0:30:12.160
but you've got the kennels you've got the ponds in
which the animals drink and wash you've got this
0:30:12.160,0:30:18.160
site in which again you can come and look at the
animals so i think um it's an incredibly important
0:30:18.720,0:30:23.440
practice in the period and one of the things we've
discovered looking beyond london is that so many
0:30:23.440,0:30:29.520
english towns actually have spaces for baiting
right at their center so the kind of um bet if
0:30:29.520,0:30:35.440
you look for bear road in particular english towns
if you look for the bear in um the bear in seems
0:30:35.440,0:30:41.600
to be where the baiting happens it tends to be on
bare roads um you can see how central this act is
0:30:42.320,0:30:47.840
to the um to the english imagination so um
that's what what we're looking at the ancient
0:30:47.840,0:30:53.680
dna analysis is aiming to find out things like
um the gender of the bears potentially the the
0:30:53.680,0:31:00.320
breed of the bears potentially where they're from
we can use things like um dental records to think
0:31:00.320,0:31:05.760
about their age and their health we can look at
bones to think about trauma marks and therefore
0:31:05.760,0:31:10.560
to think about the kinds of combat that they're
engaged in and then we're hoping to put that all
0:31:10.560,0:31:16.400
into dialogue with how baiting is imagined in
the period um and baiting is deep into the heart
0:31:16.400,0:31:20.960
of the way shakespeare thinks about certain
characters particularly at the ends of plays
0:31:21.760,0:31:29.600
famously macbeth um ends the play um comparing
himself to a baited bear gloucester in king lear
0:31:29.600,0:31:36.160
as he's about to be blinded says i am tied to the
stake and i must stay the course um so characters
0:31:36.160,0:31:41.920
in shakespeare repeatedly compare themselves to
a bear being baited um so there are there are
0:31:41.920,0:31:45.200
just an awful lot of stories to be told there but
the last thing i'll say and you're welcome to ask
0:31:45.200,0:31:49.200
any more questions of course but we're also just
like before shakespeare we're keen to work with
0:31:49.760,0:31:53.440
contemporary practitioners and in this case we're
working with a group of professional wrestlers
0:31:54.000,0:32:00.320
because we want to think about what it is like
to perform combat in front of an audience um
0:32:00.320,0:32:06.640
one of the things you do if you if you run a bear
baiting um as a as a practice we actually tom we
0:32:06.640,0:32:10.960
actually have found um the diary of a bear ward
so someone who owned a bear and was traveling
0:32:10.960,0:32:15.840
around the country we're able to trace this man
for two months around england on a day-to-day
0:32:15.840,0:32:21.840
basis sometimes on an hour by hour basis and
that the two bears he had these poor bears
0:32:21.840,0:32:25.600
are being repeatedly baited not
just across days but across months
0:32:25.600,0:32:31.200
so the last thing you want when you're staging
that is for the blood sport to become actually
0:32:33.040,0:32:37.200
dangerous to the point where the bear can't
fight the next day so these are stage managed
0:32:37.760,0:32:41.840
performance events so we're going to work with
professional wrestlers professional wrestling
0:32:41.840,0:32:46.400
grows out of much the same logic really you know
if you're making money from being a fighter you
0:32:46.400,0:32:51.680
need to be able to make money as a fighter the
following day so introducing levels of performance
0:32:51.680,0:32:57.040
into what you do is the way to to make that happen
so those are the sorts of ways in which we're
0:32:57.040,0:33:00.960
approaching baiting i don't quite know what we're
going to find but i'm really looking forward to it
0:33:00.960,0:33:07.280
oh you just said several things and i have
that you know i go on about 17 things right now
0:33:07.280,0:33:14.160
that have just entered my mind but i was always
under the impression that the bear uh died
0:33:14.960,0:33:19.760
at any given event that they would bring in
enough dogs and that the bear died but these are
0:33:19.760,0:33:26.400
sort of gladiator bears that can survive a given
event and probably were expected to survive and
0:33:27.120,0:33:32.960
there must have been some there must have been
some talent out there like the uh the famous bear
0:33:32.960,0:33:42.160
just like he had the famous wrestler and so they
were used the bears won typically apparently they
0:33:43.200,0:33:50.160
they tended to make it through and killed
the dogs and then lived to fight another day
0:33:51.040,0:33:55.120
yeah so bears lots of bears become
celebrities um fascinatingly a lot of
0:33:55.120,0:34:00.320
the bears are linked to particular places um
in england so it's almost like um a bit like
0:34:00.320,0:34:05.840
football than the uk now people cheering on for
their team cheering on their local bear perhaps um
0:34:06.480,0:34:11.600
certainly lots of dogs will have died but but
actually the archaeological evidence of the dogs
0:34:11.600,0:34:15.440
and again we were just at the start of this
project i should stress but um we have found
0:34:15.440,0:34:20.960
hundreds of dogs and the thing that surprised our
archaeologists is just how old the dogs are and
0:34:20.960,0:34:25.840
that there is evidence that when bones have been
broken they have been reset by humans so we are
0:34:25.840,0:34:30.160
seeing a history firstly we're seeing a history
of cruelty but we're also seeing a history of care
0:34:30.720,0:34:35.840
um and so that's surprising too so there may
have been stage management around the dogs
0:34:35.840,0:34:41.600
as well these are massive dogs mastiffs for which
england was famous going back to the roman period
0:34:41.600,0:34:47.040
and and there's a real cultural association of
englishness and mastiffs kind of predating the
0:34:47.040,0:34:53.760
more familiar association between england
and the bulldog um and so the dogs too may
0:34:53.760,0:34:58.240
well have been cared for and their safety
may have been managed as part of this sport
0:34:59.280,0:35:03.840
well the small amount of research and this just
i have not done specific research but it's in
0:35:03.840,0:35:10.160
reading something else and somebody's going to
bear baiting and invariably in three accounts
0:35:10.160,0:35:16.560
that i can think of now the word pleasurable was
it was very pleasurable just like going out to
0:35:16.560,0:35:21.440
i don't know see a a light comedy or something
like that you know that there was great pleasure
0:35:21.440,0:35:26.880
i imagine in a good football match that there's
that feeling of particularly when your team wins
0:35:27.520,0:35:34.240
that that feeling of pleasure and joy uh
and you guys were talking in your video on
0:35:34.240,0:35:39.280
this about bedding and so i guess there were some
people who were pulling for the bear or how long
0:35:39.280,0:35:47.040
it would take for the bear to win which or what
and other people with the dogs but anyway they
0:35:47.040,0:35:52.000
seem to have a lot of pleasure and there were i
do remember something where a monkey was involved
0:35:52.560,0:35:56.400
and everybody got a lot of joy out of
seeing a monkey riding on a bear's back
0:35:57.280,0:36:02.560
and that was just that stole the show or it
just seemed like that from what i was reading
0:36:02.560,0:36:08.720
this is wildly good and you have an article
on this the performing animals in the in a
0:36:08.720,0:36:15.040
journal of animal history and literature i'm
not saying that correctly is that yeah it's
0:36:15.040,0:36:20.800
a book on um literary animals literary animals
it came out before the project i should say so
0:36:20.800,0:36:24.880
it's not really about bear baiting it's actually
about dogs on stage i should say the project's
0:36:24.880,0:36:31.120
called box off the spares and our website so
if anyone's interested uh boxofficebears.com
0:36:31.120,0:36:35.680
is the place to look we're publishing primary
documents up there transcriptions and photographs
0:36:35.680,0:36:40.000
we're making some animations about some of the
stories that we're discovering um particularly
0:36:40.000,0:36:45.040
around bears on the streets in england and the
big actually one of the biggest discoveries of
0:36:45.040,0:36:51.520
the project so far is how often bears accidentally
get into people's houses terrifying right we keep
0:36:51.520,0:36:55.840
hearing again and again about bears um you know
being let loose by the bear ward they lose control
0:36:55.840,0:37:01.680
of the animal and it just it just goes into
somebody's house terrifying absolutely terrifying
0:37:02.800,0:37:10.560
when i was in hiroshima years ago teaching there
at the hiroshima university uh one day i just you
0:37:10.560,0:37:16.240
know looked at the news of the paper and there's
big news up in the mountains and hiroshima is a
0:37:16.240,0:37:24.000
million people it's a large town by our standards
and in a a suburban area just a little bit outside
0:37:24.000,0:37:31.280
of the city center not far you could actually
walk it uh and there's this gentleman and a
0:37:31.280,0:37:36.240
grandfather that say oh gee sign in japan he's
sitting and it's on his tatami mat you know
0:37:36.240,0:37:40.720
very traditional having his bowl of noodles
or whatever and a bear comes flying through
0:37:42.640,0:37:48.240
and and mauls him he wasn't killed but
he's hurt and the bear was looking for food
0:37:49.040,0:37:55.440
what do you do about that you know so i don't
know this is a a little bit off topic but i do
0:37:55.440,0:38:00.480
remember the pictures in the paper the next of
the hiroshima hunting club they had to go out
0:38:00.480,0:38:06.240
and get their rifles and these were guys and they
hunted the bear down and killed the bear but uh
0:38:07.200,0:38:14.480
um i could talk about bears all day but
we'd run out we would run uh out of my uh
0:38:15.120,0:38:22.160
expertise uh i wanted to look at so pretty pretty
quickly uh except that there there are a lot of
0:38:22.160,0:38:28.000
them still and they are a growing population near
where i grew up in south carolina in the mountains
0:38:28.000,0:38:32.960
above there in north carolina lots of black
bear which aren't as threatening as these
0:38:32.960,0:38:37.440
you know grizzly you see in the movies and so
forth but there is a public fascination with
0:38:37.440,0:38:43.280
bears there always is and of course they're
they're they're great examples of people who
0:38:43.280,0:38:48.560
you know have their pet bear and and
think of bears as being happy and nice and
0:38:48.560,0:38:55.520
uh no they they can get really rough with you
very quickly you did some work uh in the past on
0:38:56.640,0:39:01.440
uh london theatrical culture i think
that was for that that's just an overview
0:39:01.440,0:39:09.760
1560 to 1590 so you've established yourself
as an expert in that uh period of time and
0:39:10.960,0:39:17.040
you talked a good bit about the 1580s and uh
and john lilly and of course as robert greene
0:39:17.040,0:39:25.760
the university wits are coming on and they're but
the 70s is a little bit more obscure and the 60s
0:39:25.760,0:39:32.320
more obscure although we do know that there's
a theater activity so i have not read that
0:39:32.320,0:39:37.840
article i will i promise you soon but i'm
dying to find out what you had to say about
0:39:37.840,0:39:48.560
the 60s the 1560s and 70s that are not as well
documented as uh as the later decades yeah um
0:39:48.560,0:39:51.920
i think the first thing to say is that we
start hearing about theatrical activity
0:39:52.720,0:39:57.280
um i mean theatrical activity in general we start
bringing about as soon as we start hearing about
0:39:57.280,0:40:03.120
english english culture right back to the roman
the roman period um we start hearing about things
0:40:03.120,0:40:11.280
which sound a little bit like professional troops
and potentially um sites for regular performance
0:40:12.160,0:40:16.960
as early as the late 15th century and early
16th century so it's something which predates
0:40:16.960,0:40:24.320
even the 1560s um what we hear about in the 1560s
in particular is the red lion playhouse which i
0:40:24.320,0:40:28.880
mentioned earlier which we've seen we think we
now have discovered thanks to stephen wright
0:40:29.440,0:40:36.400
um and his team at the university college london
um and we didn't know about the red lion until
0:40:36.400,0:40:42.160
the 1980s when two documents were discovered
which were the propriet proprietor john brain
0:40:42.720,0:40:48.960
um taking to court the carpenters responsible for
the scaffolding and for the stage of the space of
0:40:48.960,0:40:54.560
the audience and the space for the actors and
um that evidence has not really been again that
0:40:54.560,0:40:58.640
well integrated into the it's history but when
it has been integrated scholars tend to think of
0:40:58.640,0:41:03.520
the red lion as a transient space which is only
open for a matter of months we have no evidence
0:41:03.520,0:41:09.520
either way about that and um actually i suspect
the archaeological evidence we found last year
0:41:09.520,0:41:14.480
is going to tell us that the red line was open
for possibly for decades um so i think the really
0:41:14.480,0:41:19.760
crucial thing to stress again and again is that we
don't know much and when we do know about things
0:41:19.760,0:41:25.200
scholarships reaction tends to be to reject or to
downplay that evidence in favor of what happens
0:41:25.200,0:41:30.800
in the 1580s and particularly at playhouses
associated with shakespeare like the theater
0:41:31.600,0:41:37.120
and i think once you stop doing that and you take
all of your evidence much more seriously as i said
0:41:37.120,0:41:41.360
earlier i think the really crucial thing is that
we get more than 10 playhouses opening by the late
0:41:41.360,0:41:48.080
1570s which is itself extraordinary um one of the
most important take-home messages of the project
0:41:48.080,0:41:53.760
for me has been that um there are women at the
top of the leadership structure of at least half
0:41:53.760,0:42:02.960
of those playhouses um so women who own or rent
um in playing spaces for example anne farrent at
0:42:02.960,0:42:08.880
the blackfriar's playhouse the indoor playhouse
and people like margaret brain who's the wife
0:42:08.880,0:42:14.480
of john brain not only does she help to finance
the building of a theater when the project runs
0:42:14.480,0:42:19.440
out of money she literally picks up tools and is
one of the carpenters helping to build the theatre
0:42:19.440,0:42:27.280
playhouse and about five years later the burbidges
beat margaret brain off the property by broomstick
0:42:28.400,0:42:35.280
whilst hurling hurling abuse at her and so we can
see in this early period firstly um the centrality
0:42:35.280,0:42:41.200
of female entrepreneurs to setting up these spaces
but we can also see marginalization happening in
0:42:41.200,0:42:47.440
real time in the period we can see women being
ousted um from from their own property by a family
0:42:47.440,0:42:52.480
so strongly associated with shakespeare later in
the form of the verbiage um the burbidge family
0:42:52.480,0:42:59.360
so those are the big um take-home messages for
me i really do think those spaces are remapping
0:42:59.360,0:43:05.040
what you can do with your body in leisure time in
london and what you can do with your mind um yeah
0:43:05.040,0:43:10.080
these are these are places which are staging as
i said earlier stories which are deeply illegal
0:43:10.080,0:43:17.360
at the level of religion and politics um and
something like close to half of london i think
0:43:17.360,0:43:22.720
must have been going to the theaters regularly to
keep these places in in business london is growing
0:43:22.720,0:43:27.680
but it's still a pretty small city and to have
these ten playhouses regularly playing to public
0:43:27.680,0:43:34.240
audiences that suggests there's almost a level of
radicalization going on i think at the level of um
0:43:34.960,0:43:40.000
the creative imagination uh the possibilities of
what life might look like as these theaters start
0:43:40.000,0:43:46.080
staging you know stories about middle eastern
tyrants about ancient greek queer people about
0:43:46.080,0:43:52.240
atheists about necromancers um extraordinary
and i i just don't think we've quite taken
0:43:53.440,0:43:58.480
understood yet what a sea change that is which
is occurring in the middle of the 16th century
0:43:58.480,0:44:05.600
crucially not at the end uh but in the middle um
as elizabeth the first comes to the throne not not
0:44:05.600,0:44:10.800
towards the end of her reign so it's it's about
remapping and re historicizing that moment i think
0:44:10.800,0:44:18.720
for me well also i was talking i i spoke recently
with heather knight of mola with one of your dear
0:44:18.720,0:44:25.600
friends and they've been working on the boar's
head and they date that to the 60s too and again
0:44:25.600,0:44:33.280
i am have not completed any kind of research on
that but there's activity there and you know it's
0:44:33.280,0:44:40.000
sort of like uh i don't know there's an old adage
you see a mouse and you in your house and you get
0:44:40.000,0:44:45.120
rid of it in whatever way and you figure well i
got rid of the mouse if you see a roach you assume
0:44:45.120,0:44:50.320
you have more roaches right and i don't want to
compare theaters with roaches but it's sort of
0:44:51.200,0:44:59.840
sort of the same thing i mean if you have one two
and you this certain schools of historiography
0:44:59.840,0:45:06.160
would say you can't speculate beyond what we have
physical evidence of but yeah you can because if
0:45:06.160,0:45:13.360
they're two of them they're probably more venues
out there and more people entrepreneurs just like
0:45:13.360,0:45:18.160
you would see in any college town in the united
states you have a guy who opens a little bar
0:45:18.160,0:45:23.360
and he has live performances and there's local
bands and so forth and sometimes the venue lasts
0:45:23.360,0:45:29.440
for three months they don't make it sometimes it
goes for years you know like the marquee club in
0:45:29.440,0:45:36.560
london you know it just keeps on going and going
and uh and so mostly i think these theaters were
0:45:36.560,0:45:46.400
fairly ephemeral but they probably if you lived
during that time it they you went there and uh
0:45:46.400,0:45:52.080
and secondly i wanted to talk about what you
know the the in the process of enlightenment
0:45:52.080,0:45:58.720
it reminded me of you know my my father was world
war ii and he just despised all this rock and roll
0:45:58.720,0:46:05.520
long hair stuff you know going back to the hippie
period and uh but you know i'm getting things on
0:46:05.520,0:46:10.960
the radio and hearing this stuff and i've been
trained as in piano and we've played bach and all
0:46:10.960,0:46:17.200
of that stuff and i i did play french horn i was
in classical music i loved it but you know when
0:46:17.200,0:46:24.160
you first start hearing crosby stills nation young
motown uh all of this stuff and wow you know and
0:46:24.160,0:46:31.120
it may have been something like that that finally
not finally but instead of going to a say a small
0:46:31.120,0:46:37.440
town pageant or a mayoral show or something you
have this innovative theater out there and they're
0:46:37.440,0:46:44.400
dealing with material that is not church it is not
church stuff and that's where you have your public
0:46:45.040,0:46:52.400
gatherings for people to worship and you can
see how ministers very early on saw this as a
0:46:52.400,0:46:57.680
threat maybe even financial threat you know i mean
you you want people to give ties at church you
0:46:57.680,0:47:03.040
don't want them throwing all their money away on
theater and all the things that go with it right
0:47:04.320,0:47:08.080
yep absolutely financial threat and
an imaginative threat as well you know
0:47:09.360,0:47:16.480
a priest wants a priest is speaking to your your
imaginative ability to engage with the stories in
0:47:16.480,0:47:22.800
the bible and the stories the wider stories of of
the of whatever iteration of christianity they're
0:47:22.800,0:47:28.880
speaking for and if you suddenly have play houses
um telling you to imagine other places and things
0:47:28.880,0:47:34.480
then that's a it's a threat of your hold um not
just on their financial but they're imaginative
0:47:34.480,0:47:40.720
resources as well i think that's right and um the
um the anti-theatrical sermons which object to the
0:47:40.720,0:47:46.880
theaters almost always also object to baiting and
betting uh so again you can see how those those
0:47:46.880,0:47:52.800
things exist in a kind of continuum for people who
are worried about them yeah well that goes on to
0:47:52.800,0:47:59.920
modern times you know where you have to have
special uh dispensation to to have a casino
0:47:59.920,0:48:06.160
and uh the famous examples in the states of saying
well you can't have it in the state but uh i don't
0:48:06.160,0:48:11.920
know if it's 50 or 100 yards you can build a
basically a large raft and that's uh that's the
0:48:11.920,0:48:17.520
water that's not so uh that's that's happened in
a lot of cases of course las vegas and so forth
0:48:17.520,0:48:23.120
but we still don't have um even though a lot of
people enjoy gambling and betting and so forth
0:48:23.120,0:48:29.120
i was fortunate in that when i was young i bet uh
and you know just in a bar you know when i was in
0:48:29.120,0:48:36.560
college i i bet a couple of times on of a sports
match here and there and every time i did i lost
0:48:37.760,0:48:42.800
and i said you know this isn't for me i can't pick
a winner but if i've won one of those you know you
0:48:42.800,0:48:47.920
don't know where that's going to lead right but i
have friends who just love it you know and they go
0:48:47.920,0:48:53.600
out and play golf and uh you were talking in your
little program with uh on your website with your
0:48:53.600,0:49:02.480
uh colleagues there about one of your colleagues
the uh was talking about how microcosmic right
0:49:02.480,0:49:07.360
so you know you've your bet you golfers will bet
on who's going to win the hole but then you get
0:49:07.360,0:49:12.800
up there and say okay will i get out of this sand
trap in one are you you know let's throw a couple
0:49:12.800,0:49:20.720
of dollars you know if it's in the states on that
uh but yeah the um the morally upright you don't
0:49:20.720,0:49:26.640
see that as being a part of the uh of the work
ethic they would support and having a stable
0:49:26.640,0:49:34.720
civilized uh sober uh humble culture you've done
a little work on digital humanities and that's
0:49:34.720,0:49:41.360
one of the subsets of this program and you have an
article on digital humanities and non-shakespeare
0:49:41.360,0:49:47.200
what's going on there i have to say that it's
just a small write-up really of what we're doing
0:49:47.200,0:49:55.920
on before shakespeare and in a way i mean i'm an
embarrassingly non-technical person um and not not
0:49:55.920,0:50:00.960
good with anything digital so i'm always a bit
embarrassed to even suggest like i work in this
0:50:00.960,0:50:04.560
area but it really goes back to what we were
saying earlier about for me the importance of
0:50:05.440,0:50:11.360
speaking to a public a public audience and i
do think that getting boxed into a certain set
0:50:11.360,0:50:16.080
of expertise is actually really intellectually
unhealthy if you're only ever speaking to people
0:50:16.080,0:50:21.120
who have the same assumptions about you about
primary material secondary material methodology
0:50:21.120,0:50:25.760
all the things we speak to our research students
about all of the time if we if we box ourselves
0:50:25.760,0:50:31.760
in in terms of what we think matters then we stop
seeing why it matters i think and i guess a lovely
0:50:31.760,0:50:36.640
example of that for me is that i'm now thinking
about bears which you know i haven't really
0:50:36.640,0:50:40.640
thought about bears that much in my professional
life and it's very humbling for me you know here
0:50:40.640,0:50:45.760
we are tom speaking on your brilliant um series
about shakespeare you know bears very few bears
0:50:45.760,0:50:50.720
read shakespeare he's not particularly popular
amongst the bear community but some of them have
0:50:50.720,0:50:54.960
not even heard of him which is a shame because
it's a great pun to be had in kind of like a shape
0:50:54.960,0:51:01.360
there right um but you know just being asked to to
rethink something you take for granted is central
0:51:01.920,0:51:06.160
um from the point of view of something which is
entirely indifferent to it and has no idea what it
0:51:06.160,0:51:12.800
is is a healthy thing to do so i'm a huge believer
in the digital humanities in that it opens up a
0:51:12.800,0:51:18.080
space to speak to people who do not share your
assumptions and do not show your expertise
0:51:18.080,0:51:24.320
and are useful to you for precisely those reasons
and we do tend to think of scholarly communication
0:51:24.320,0:51:29.680
in terms of expertise and it's the expert who
changes the listener i'm much much more interested
0:51:29.680,0:51:36.480
in speaking to people who will change my questions
and expertise in their in their own right which is
0:51:36.480,0:51:41.840
why i love working with practitioners it's why i
value working with wrestlers um it's why i value
0:51:41.840,0:51:48.160
working with anybody who does not think that john
lilly for example is the center of the universe
0:51:48.160,0:51:53.280
if i only spoke to people who thought that i'd
have a very lonely life anyway so um yeah for
0:51:53.280,0:51:59.120
me it's about it's about collaboration
um pooling expertise pooling resources
0:51:59.120,0:52:04.720
um and as you said earlier making it fun because
there really isn't any point in doing it other
0:52:04.720,0:52:10.800
than um for that reason and i've never really been
interested in being the lone scholar um i tend to
0:52:10.800,0:52:14.720
say this quite often but you know i don't really
like working with myself i know all of my best
0:52:14.720,0:52:20.560
jokes already um and tragically i know all of my
worst jokes already as well so why would i bother
0:52:20.560,0:52:25.920
i have no interest at all in doing that so for
me it's all about conversation and i think really
0:52:26.720,0:52:30.080
i'm not convinced i'm much of a researcher but
i definitely think i'm someone who opens up
0:52:30.080,0:52:35.280
conversations i like doing that i like hosting
conversations with elizabeth top 10 is a nice
0:52:35.280,0:52:39.440
example of that i think you know bringing in
people who didn't really work on popularity
0:52:39.440,0:52:44.000
per se and who didn't really necessarily weren't
necessarily literary scholars but asking them to
0:52:45.120,0:52:48.400
collectively think about this
question from various points of view
0:52:48.400,0:52:53.040
yeah that for me is a good microcosm of what i
like to do whether that's digital humanities or
0:52:53.040,0:52:57.200
not i don't know as i say i wouldn't put myself
forward as a digital humanities expert but for
0:52:57.200,0:53:03.040
me the digital terrain the digital platform is
useful because it just opens up a world which
0:53:03.040,0:53:08.880
tends to be quite closed quite hierarchical and
quite stretched and i like not having those things
0:53:10.080,0:53:15.840
yeah well really what drew me to digital
humanities was the fact that i am remote you're
0:53:15.840,0:53:22.160
there kind of in the center of things that and i'm
in tokyo and years some years ago i've been here
0:53:22.160,0:53:29.360
for years and we just uh we just couldn't get the
materials that we needed and then over time i see
0:53:29.360,0:53:33.760
more and more materials coming out and i have more
and more access to it and i got involved with the
0:53:34.480,0:53:42.000
jadh the japan association for digital humanities
and they are doing all kinds of different things
0:53:42.000,0:53:45.920
you know they're looking at a
boy's love in japanese manga
0:53:45.920,0:53:52.800
and uh how and and games video games and even
going you know getting theoretical about you know
0:53:52.800,0:53:59.840
what is violence is it violence if it's so campy
like you have sort of in a tarantino film you know
0:54:00.400,0:54:07.600
and talking about some fairly um very topical
and hot issues down to how how do we write this
0:54:07.600,0:54:12.160
type of programming what kind of platform we're
going to use that sort of thing but i've attended
0:54:12.160,0:54:18.800
their conference i've attended papers that for 20
minutes i had absolutely no idea what anybody was
0:54:18.800,0:54:23.360
saying and they're speaking in english you know
then i'm going i don't know and then go to another
0:54:23.360,0:54:28.800
paper and something really exciting happens but
you get that uh sense of community with someone
0:54:28.800,0:54:35.600
outside of the shakespearean realm and then that
transferability that comes in where you see these
0:54:35.600,0:54:41.920
fields and how their intersectional points where
everybody has really if you if you go to the base
0:54:42.480,0:54:46.240
very similar interest you know i i
don't know you were talking about the uh
0:54:47.600,0:54:53.600
a little bit about the life of the mind you know
but we're fascinated about history because there
0:54:53.600,0:54:59.520
is a fantasy element there that is also reality
right and we can re rebuild it in our mind
0:54:59.520,0:55:07.200
but i do think that uh in a time when we are very
focused on identity and you know who we are that
0:55:08.240,0:55:14.000
this this study there's so many pivotal moments
in the 16th century and of course the dramatic uh
0:55:14.560,0:55:23.360
uh upsurge was part of it that we we see we see
that in our lives now it's part of an id process
0:55:23.360,0:55:31.600
of identity of knowing who we are you having grown
up i in southern england i believe and uh and what
0:55:31.600,0:55:39.600
you schooled at manchester and uh kent and uh
and i'm growing up in the american south right
0:55:40.160,0:55:46.080
and and there's some years that separate us but
you know we run into these people all over and
0:55:46.080,0:55:51.200
you see all of them having made this kind of
turn in their life to get interested if it's
0:55:51.200,0:55:58.160
not our field or 16th century 17th century
is something similar and transferable well
0:55:58.160,0:56:06.800
i had here a note to ask you about your future
and uh i do want to i do want to ask you i do this
0:56:06.800,0:56:12.480
with every guest i was talking a little bit about
your educational background but you're a bright
0:56:12.480,0:56:18.480
guy you know you're in school you said you weren't
good at math but uh and neither one neither was i
0:56:19.040,0:56:26.080
i have a colleague in literature who was excellent
in that but uh it's a joke with my students i said
0:56:26.080,0:56:31.360
i'm not going to put these numbers out here about
your averages you just you know you can take this
0:56:31.360,0:56:37.520
home and ask your younger brother or older sister
somebody who's good at the uh at this but i want
0:56:37.520,0:56:41.440
to find out if there's something you know okay
you're a bright guy you're in school you're
0:56:41.440,0:56:47.520
doing pretty well right and uh you're having to
choose in england probably much sooner than in
0:56:47.520,0:56:53.680
the states you're kind of having to choose your
class dropping classes early on to focus when did
0:56:53.680,0:57:02.240
you think you were headed into the humanities
direction um probably always to the humanities
0:57:03.200,0:57:09.040
i can't really remember when i first started
seeing shows um both both kind of shakespeare
0:57:09.040,0:57:15.040
style theater but also musicals but probably
when i was 12 13 something like that and just
0:57:16.320,0:57:21.280
loved it absolutely fell in love with it um did a
little bit of drama at school i actually ended up
0:57:21.280,0:57:26.720
writing probably very bad plays i had a reunion
with two old school friends a couple of weeks ago
0:57:26.720,0:57:33.680
and one of them to my astonishment still has some
of her speeches from a play i wrote when i was 16
0:57:33.680,0:57:40.560
in her head and i item i'm turning 41 in
october so this is many many many years later um
0:57:41.120,0:57:47.120
and uh i haven't thought about this play
since 1996 and she started reading the speech
0:57:47.120,0:57:53.040
off so you know you and i as as theater
scholars talk about how plays circulate
0:57:53.040,0:57:57.120
where they sit how they get printed but there's
an example of a play which i haven't looked at
0:57:57.120,0:58:03.040
on paper for decades but it's just sat in her
head and she was able to trot it out quite quite
0:58:03.040,0:58:06.880
astonishing and word for word i even knew it was
worth the word even though i'd forgotten it i knew
0:58:06.880,0:58:12.720
that she was getting it right so um there's an
example of how plays can circulate decades later
0:58:12.720,0:58:20.160
um and um yes i was i definitely was interested
in in theater and performance um and didn't
0:58:20.160,0:58:25.040
really know what to do with that at school i
was really lucky that i was encouraged to read
0:58:25.040,0:58:29.280
i'm from canterbury so i'm from marlow land
i'm also from john lilyland but nobody knew
0:58:29.280,0:58:34.160
that because no one cared about john lilly but
i was encouraged to read marlow and i was a
0:58:34.160,0:58:39.200
queer kid um not necessarily that aware of
being queer um until i was probably about
0:58:39.200,0:58:42.720
16 but i was encouraged to read marlow
and you know there is edward the second
0:58:43.280,0:58:51.120
this extraordinary play about um a gay king and i
was i also um from my a levels for my exams i read
0:58:51.120,0:58:56.560
duchess of malfi um which is another way you know
extraordinary way of thinking about early modern
0:58:57.360,0:59:04.400
sexuality and the defense of an exploration of um
sexuality in the guise of a woman demanding to be
0:59:04.400,0:59:09.360
allowed to marry the woman she the man she wants
to marry um and i just found those place much more
0:59:09.360,0:59:13.520
exciting than the shakespeare plays i was being
asked to read so right from the start i kind of
0:59:13.520,0:59:18.080
was intrigued by that difference that
shakespeare is on this huge cultural pedestal
0:59:18.080,0:59:23.840
these other writers were not but actually i was
much more drawn to to the other writers um i
0:59:23.840,0:59:27.520
didn't want to go to university i was really
adamant that i would not go to university
0:59:28.400,0:59:35.120
and um i actually taught in um i did a teaching
english as a foreign language very basic
0:59:35.120,0:59:39.840
course and went to teach in china in qingdao not
too far away from where you are right now tom
0:59:40.800,0:59:46.320
and taught out there for six months and then there
was some illness in my family and i came came home
0:59:46.320,0:59:50.800
and um my dad said to me i don't know if i should
be saying this on camera really let's let's agree
0:59:50.800,0:59:55.520
no one's allowed to listen to this bit but my
dad said don't be angry with me but i called up
0:59:55.520,0:59:59.280
manchester university and i pretended to be
you and you've got a place to go to university
1:00:05.440,1:00:10.400
i went up to the university to look around and um
there was a new theater opening up called contact
1:00:10.400,1:00:17.760
theatre which um was the uk's first theater um
explicitly targeting young people and people
1:00:17.760,1:00:22.320
who were traditionally excluded from the theater
so thinking about um socio-economic background
1:00:22.320,1:00:27.120
thinking about race in particular and taking
theater out onto the streets and into communities
1:00:27.120,1:00:31.520
and i walked into there and i came out with a job
and i remember saying to my dad very ungratefully
1:00:31.520,1:00:35.200
i said well i've got to go to university
now haven't i and then for the next four
1:00:35.200,1:00:40.400
years i did my undergraduate degree and i did
my master's whilst working at contact theatre
1:00:41.040,1:00:45.760
which i just loved i worked as a front of house
manager and i worked in the new writing department
1:00:45.760,1:00:52.160
working with young playwrights and writers and had
the most fantastic time and by the time i was 24
1:00:52.160,1:00:56.960
25 my life very much felt like i could either
keep working in the theatre or keep doing academia
1:00:58.880,1:01:04.720
and i i was lucky enough to get funding as a
phd student to work on on john lilly and off i
1:01:04.720,1:01:08.880
went but i was really anxious but that meant i was
saying goodbye to the theater but actually what's
1:01:08.880,1:01:12.240
been wonderful is i brought the theater with
me and i'm kind of coming back to the theater
1:01:12.960,1:01:16.800
now so i'm sort of answering that's a very long
question a long answer to your question but
1:01:16.800,1:01:20.320
always knew i was going to work in
the humanities didn't quite know how
1:01:20.880,1:01:25.360
and to be honest even now i don't quite know
quite know how i've recently gone part-time as
1:01:25.360,1:01:32.720
an academic and i'm thinking about other kinds of
careers i might have so even um going into my 40s
1:01:32.720,1:01:36.560
it's not quite clear to me what academia
looks like as a profession for me anymore
1:01:36.560,1:01:41.280
and i'm looking forward to trying out other other
ways of making a living and i'm making sure i do
1:01:41.280,1:01:44.720
say that as part of this conversation because
i think so many other people in our profession
1:01:44.720,1:01:50.320
feel like that as well and it's something which
is weirdly taboo i think it should be okay to say
1:01:50.320,1:01:54.240
that here i am in this profession i'm having
a good time but there are other professions
1:01:54.240,1:01:59.920
out there and it's important to see what other
features we might have um alongside an academic
1:01:59.920,1:02:07.040
one so that's where i'm at at the moment yeah
um you said you just turned or about to turn 41
1:02:07.040,1:02:15.200
yeah almost uh almost exactly that on the same
age we left hiroshima and came back to the states
1:02:15.200,1:02:22.800
and i i said i'm going to branch out and i
met with uh i won't say dismal failure failure
1:02:25.600,1:02:31.440
there were times there where i uh you know in
the old movie raising arizona where the guy
1:02:31.440,1:02:36.160
slows up by the at the convenience store
because he's addicted to robbing a king
1:02:36.160,1:02:41.600
i slowed up i'm not a robber but i was thinking
there was a help wanted sign in there and i might
1:02:41.600,1:02:45.920
be able to make a little money on the side in
this convenience store and it was beginning to
1:02:45.920,1:02:51.280
look like i was going to have to do something
like that and although i did manage to maintain
1:02:51.280,1:02:57.360
myself as a sort of independent contractor now
i was not in london i was in a a medium-sized
1:02:57.360,1:03:04.880
southern town and so when this job came here at
aoyama gakuin my brief excursion to the world
1:03:06.720,1:03:12.480
i've been hearing all this incoming fire and
going okay uh and this job has been just such
1:03:12.480,1:03:18.800
such a heavenly appointment it's so stable and so
good and the colleagues are so good and the the
1:03:18.800,1:03:23.680
you know in the middle of tokyo everything just
fit together but i had a lot of questions before
1:03:23.680,1:03:29.840
i came and i fully understand what you're talking
about and you're in london and multi-talented and
1:03:29.840,1:03:36.800
have a lot of associations i mean not only in
terms of uh of getting involved in the theater
1:03:36.800,1:03:43.520
and going uh doing that sort of thing but there
are a lot of different types of jobs in the arts
1:03:43.520,1:03:48.880
and the humanities that are well funded and that
uh you know there are lots of opportunities so
1:03:49.680,1:03:58.560
i i i wish you the absolute best i don't i have
no doubt that you will just succeed tremendously
1:03:59.440,1:04:06.160
but i do want to say for our listeners that
the in in japan we have not been hit hard
1:04:06.160,1:04:17.200
by the economic downturn that caused by the uh
covert pandemic and uh universities in the uk
1:04:17.200,1:04:25.200
have been hit very very hard and that and they're
they're scaling back and it's just a numbers game
1:04:25.200,1:04:30.960
they don't care if your name is andy or if your
name is mary or if your name is mark you know they
1:04:32.080,1:04:39.520
they have to figure out and configure a way
to keep the institution going with far less
1:04:39.520,1:04:45.120
funding is that right they have has been a
major cutback and i think that's the case in
1:04:45.120,1:04:50.480
a lot of universities in the states and i may be
speaking too soon about us and they're probably
1:04:50.480,1:04:54.880
there a lot of people who aren't as well as
well-equipped to make a transition as you are uh
1:04:55.680,1:05:02.400
certainly and uh well i had something about the
future here i can see bears in your future now
1:05:04.320,1:05:11.440
that that grant funding stands uh regardless
of uh you're still affiliated with rohampton
1:05:12.000,1:05:19.200
and a beautiful wonderful place when i visited
there and i'm sorry to hear that roe hampton
1:05:19.200,1:05:25.680
and along with i'm sure many other universities
have had some problems but what 900 000 pounds
1:05:25.680,1:05:31.760
that you guys have and that's well north of a
million american dollars so that's a substantial
1:05:31.760,1:05:39.120
grant that is in a project that has all kinds of
potential in terms of public engagement i mean
1:05:39.120,1:05:44.640
when you get down to it who isn't interested
in bears and you already have the controversy
1:05:44.640,1:05:49.360
built in because you know there's going to be
some group of twiddly d twiddly dumb people who
1:05:49.360,1:05:54.800
get upset because you were even bringing up
the idea of animal cruelty right good that's
1:05:55.600,1:06:01.600
just like you know the uh the the fundamentalist
christians who come out and scream about your
1:06:01.600,1:06:08.320
movie and then everybody goes right and of course
of course none of us believe in animal cruelty
1:06:08.320,1:06:15.040
but how fascinating to see the difference between
the way they saw it and the way i mean if you and
1:06:15.040,1:06:20.480
i went to a bear baiting show i think we throw up
and leave within five minutes right it would just
1:06:20.480,1:06:28.080
be too horrible and and maybe i don't know you you
know call up the cops right it's against the law
1:06:28.080,1:06:34.640
for yeah i don't know how i feel about that
i mean um i think the two the two responses
1:06:34.640,1:06:38.960
that i get from the project the two negative ones
are the one you just talked about and by the way
1:06:38.960,1:06:43.920
if anyone's listening and are offended please
write to tom and not to me um but yeah um the
1:06:43.920,1:06:48.160
people who are furious that you're even engaging
with it as if it's somehow the way to deal with
1:06:48.160,1:06:53.040
it is to pretend it didn't happen which i find a
very odd reaction but then also the kind of the
1:06:53.040,1:06:58.080
view that you're describing tom which is clearly
just legitimate in lots of ways of saying that now
1:06:59.280,1:07:04.080
we're very different now in our approach to
animals but but i do worry about that as well that
1:07:04.080,1:07:08.800
you know safari is a big thing and people
desperate to see the kill when they go on safari
1:07:08.800,1:07:14.080
people watching animal programs and watching
them hunt one another um and how much children's
1:07:14.080,1:07:20.400
television is essentially about animals fighting
um from things like the transformers movies which
1:07:20.400,1:07:24.480
you know they were around when i was a kid those
robots turning into animals and fighting not just
1:07:24.480,1:07:30.240
animals but we do see animal combat actually
quite a lot i would say lord of the rings full
1:07:30.240,1:07:36.160
of fighting animals um so i think it is it is
oddly still central dog fighting is still a very
1:07:36.160,1:07:42.480
big thing and quite a big part of gang culture
i believe um and youtube you know unfortunately
1:07:42.480,1:07:48.960
having put films up on youtube about bears now
youtube recommends to me extremely distasteful
1:07:48.960,1:07:54.640
films um most of which look like they're cgi and
they're fake but um of animals fighting or eating
1:07:54.640,1:08:01.120
one another so that there is still unfortunately
a strong appetite for want of a better word um
1:08:01.120,1:08:06.320
there's you know people still want to watch this
so i don't know how much we i don't know how much
1:08:06.320,1:08:10.240
we have changed i think what's changed is that
humans tell one another they care about animals
1:08:10.240,1:08:14.400
which i don't think they did as much in the early
modern period but whether we're right about that
1:08:14.400,1:08:18.640
i don't i don't really know i'm sorry to end
with a negative thought but yeah i wonder if it
1:08:18.640,1:08:24.560
is as true as we think that we have changed that
much uh listen that's down a couple of tears you
1:08:24.560,1:08:35.360
think of the treatment of women the treatment
of uh anybody who would uh uh be of any non
1:08:36.000,1:08:41.120
what do you say traditional sexual orientation you
had to be extraordinarily careful about that but
1:08:41.120,1:08:46.640
you had to be careful about if you were a commoner
how you spoke to a gentleman or somebody of rank
1:08:46.640,1:08:52.000
you had to be careful about a lot of things and
i don't think we have time to go into this now
1:08:52.000,1:08:57.440
children were not viewed as children i think they
were viewed as young adults and of course there's
1:08:57.440,1:09:03.680
you know uh stories of uh what we would consider
to be child abuse i don't think you know we won't
1:09:03.680,1:09:09.920
get into that because there were there was an
incredibly influential artistic movement that
1:09:09.920,1:09:16.800
involved boys companies uh and that propelled all
of the drama i think of course hamlet complains
1:09:16.800,1:09:22.640
about it but i think if you really looked at it
uh andy kessinger's style through the market and
1:09:22.640,1:09:29.200
so forth that like you said one one group propels
another group it just creates more and more public
1:09:29.200,1:09:36.320
interest and so forth well what i want to do
you've given me far too much of your time on your
1:09:36.320,1:09:44.880
monday morning monday morning and uh thank you so
much andy we are delighted i wish it were you uh
1:09:44.880,1:09:51.200
in person in the flesh i'd love to see you and i'd
love to see jimmy again uh like we did a couple of
1:09:51.200,1:09:58.720
years ago in tokyo and i see it in your future i
see it sometime in in the future and maybe not so
1:09:58.720,1:10:06.320
distant yeah but uh again and could you stay just
a moment uh after we finish but i wanted to thank
1:10:06.320,1:10:13.120
you so much for uh taking time to speak with us
and my uh largely japanese audience but growing
1:10:13.120,1:10:29.840
international audience and globalizing shakespeare
thank you so much thank you tom thank you
1:10:30.880,1:10:31.380
you